


Me and You and a Dog Named Boo

by roughmagic, saberteeth, witchoil



Category: Venom (Movie 2018), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Car Chases, Car Sex, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Gender-neutral Reader, Multi, Other, Overstimulation, Oviposition, Polyamory, Praise Kink, Rimming, Road Head, Tentacle Sex, Threesome, Under-negotiated Kink, Unsanitary, Wet & Messy, Xenophilia, canon? i don't know her
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-07-15 07:09:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16058078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roughmagic/pseuds/roughmagic, https://archiveofourown.org/users/saberteeth/pseuds/saberteeth, https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchoil/pseuds/witchoil
Summary: You're starting to learn more about the things Eddie likes -- cheap diner coffee, manual transmission, glo-worms, oldies -- and that's nice. You're starting to learn more about what Venom likes, too."Me and you and a dog named booTravelin' and livin' off the landMe and you and a dog named booHow I love being a free man"Venom/Reader/EddieThis fic is currently on hiatus.





	1. Ventura Highway

**Author's Note:**

> Technically, this is not a crossover because they belong to the same comics universe. 
> 
> But _practically_ speaking, this is not a crossover because it has nothing whatsoever to do with Venom canon -- comics or cinematic. 
> 
> Kind of a “you got your chocolate in my peanut butter” type situation.
> 
> In any case, we heard y'all wanted to fuck Venom?????

> _Ventura Highway in the sunshine_
> 
> _Where the days are longer_
> 
> _The nights are stronger_
> 
> _Than moonshine_
> 
> _You're gonna go, I know_

                                    -- “Ventura Highway,” America

 

 

Flop sweat drips down the back of your neck as you bundle into the car at three A.M.

A shaking hand releases your shoulder and drops you in the passenger seat of the car. A heap of clothes and an open day bag follow, spilling out over your lap.

Eddie chatters as he shuts your door and shuffles quickly around the long, flat hood of the car, the gold firebird just barely visible in a dim streetlight. It’s not clear whether or not he’s talking to you.

“Sorry, god, I’m sorry-- I had no idea-- I mean, I’ve met assholes before but I wasn’t expecting him to swing like that.”

You’re not sure exactly what he means, although he keeps apologizing while he fumbles with the key.

“Eddie,” you say, trying to get him to slow down for a second, to breathe.

He ignores you and throws the car into gear. She jerks backwards and stalls with a clap.

You’re groggy, but you definitely don’t remember seeing the other guy throw a punch, or really seeing much of him at all. Ten minutes ago you were asleep, and then you were watching as a big, black _something_ like animate tar exploded from his body.

“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie,” you say, putting a hand on his arm where it grips the steering wheel. “Stop. Stop for a second.”

He looks over with his eyebrows raised, more fearful than angry.

“Nobody’s coming out after us. Just wait for a minute.”

He flicks a glance out the windshield of the car to confirm your assertion. No one is coming. The front of the hostel is as quiet and still as when you arrived. The world is not falling apart.

“What happened?”

Eddie takes a deep breath in and lets it out in a sigh. He rolls his shoulders and cracks his neck. He sighs again. “I didn’t want to get into it, but, right. Okay. About _that_.”

“I have,” Eddie says, “a kinda...parasite.”

**\--**

When Moose had asked if you’d be okay with working with a stranger, you weren’t sure what you expected, but it wasn’t Eddie.

Standing in front of him two days earlier, you had tried to pin down what he did for a living, with his tired eyes, loose hoodie, and firm handshake.

The worn clothes said something that didn’t involve a lot of money, as did his involvement in one of Moose’s schemes, but his watch looked deceptively expensive and he had the relaxed stance of someone who wasn’t afraid of failing to make rent. He had the social graces of your weird, old thesis advisor without the overeducation. Sharp eyes that scanned the room like he was memorizing it, but he had a tendency to make Moose repeat himself every other sentence. A career criminal with hearing damage? An absent-minded high school teacher with a rent-controlled apartment?

But when you introduced yourself, all he says was, “Eddie, Eddie Brock,” in the weirdest regional accent you’ve ever heard.

Moose gave you a minute to look at each other and fail to exchange pleasantries before giving up and taking you out back of his rental house.

Three shining muscle cars were parked in the overgrown and yellowing yard, only one of which you know the name of. Eddie whistled.

“Doin’ good for yourself up here, huh?”

Moose shrugged and gave an affectionate pat the firebird of a black Pontiac Trans Am. “I’ve got a buyer for her down in Salt Lake City, but don’t have the time to take her there myself and shipping is heinous.”

“What about the extra miles?” Eddie tripped over the words like a kid hopping down stairs, like he wasn’t not quite sure where the next one would lead him.

“She’s a ’78 Trans Am, nobody’s selling new.”

Coming closer, you saw Moose is right about that. The leather interior had an unmistakable patina. With soft, dark spots of wear and small cracks, it wasn’t busted, but it wasn’t stiff and shiny-new, either. A front-facing slab of burnished gold with tiny overlapping circles brushed into it made up the dashboard, interrupted by hairline scratches and the circular portholes of the gauges and air vents. She had no anachronistic tape deck or satellite radio between the front seats, just the original set of two dials on each side of a backlit, lucite display.

Not new, but perfect, in a way. It was easy to imagine spending a long time in that car, by counts of miles or years. Some people must have sat in here and listened to the radio: when Sally Ride went into space in ‘83, when the Berlin wall fell ‘89, when the first mutant cure was tested (and failed) in ‘96. You couldn’t remember all of those things, but the car probably could.

“You got the beer truck stashed somewhere else?” You’d asked Moose.

He didn’t seem to get it, but Eddie did, giving a gravelly little laugh.

“Smokey and the Bandit, good one.”

“Yeah, saw it as a kid, never forgot it.”

“Or the car.”

“How could I?”

“Amen,” Eddie said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and nodding solemnly.

Moose drummed his fingers on the roof of the car and smiled. “I knew you two weirdos would get along.”

“Who are you calling a weirdo?” Eddie asked.

“Are you serious? You’ve got an alien living inside of you.”

“Really just airing my dirty laundry like that, huh?”

“Man, too little too late, I’ve seen you on the news. They were gonna know.”

A silence followed in which they both waited for you to ask more. Was Moose being serious or just making a joke about mutation? Eddie’s weirdness was his business, just like your weirdness was yours.

“So,” you said, “Salt Lake City. That’s at least a week of driving, right?”

Eddie and Moose both shrugged. At least you weren’t the least informed.

“Buyer isn’t expecting you until the eighteenth, so you’ve got some time. Feel free to tourist it up on the way. See landmarks or whatever. My treat.”

Eddie took the billfold from Moose’s hand and flicked through it. “This really gonna get us across the country?”

“It had better.”

The sight of the cash and the prospect of a roadtrip had a tickle building in your throat. Saliva pooled up on the back of your tongue, maybe in excitement, maybe apprehension.

As you would learn, there was reason to feel both.

\--

Eddie explains very calmly in the hostel parking lot that this isn’t his first time having something happen. Not his third or fifth time, either. He doesn’t want to say much more right now -- really just wants to leave -- but he promises he’ll tell you more later, after the sun comes up.

“I’m sorry, babe,” he says, rubbing at his eyes. “Shit, is it okay if I call you that? Bad habit. I don’t have to.”

You tell him you don’t mind, there’s a lot of worse things to be called.

The car restarts easily under his now much steadier hand and he turns the radio on, volume low. “This okay? Music keeps me from nodding off.”

“No, it’s okay. I like funk, too, actually. We’re moving on, then?”

“I wanna say ‘if you don’t mind,’ but-- Yeah, we’re moving on. You should go back to sleep, though. Like I said, radio’ll keep me awake.”

Eddie doesn’t look like he’s about to nod off, but you don’t argue. He doesn’t have to tell you to sleep twice.

“Maybe no more hostels for a bit, though?”

He grunts in a way that might be a laugh or might be annoyance. “No, probably not.”

You try to make the most of your car sleep, but you can only get so comfortable in a bucket seat. The first glow of dawn illuminates the car dimly in shades of pale blue, and then orange. If he notices you waking, Eddie says nothing about it, but adjusts the radio whenever you start to leave the range of the last classics station. And it is always classics.

The Bar-Kays, the Moody Blues, Earth Wind & Fire, The Temptations. You and Eddie spend the whole morning wrapped up in fuzzy guitar and throaty vocals, with the occasional brass band backing. He likes oldies and funk and classic rock and you find out around breakfast that his favorite Fleetwood Mac song is “Dreams” (yours is “The Chain”).

You learn a lot about Eddie in that early morning, more than the previous two days combined. He stops before the border at a Tim Hortons and orders like a pro, somehow knowing how to get exactly the amount of cream and sugar you want using a series of words that sounds like a Soviet number station going off-script. He takes his coffee black, though, likes dipping his “Timbits” in it and letting the powdered sugar do the sweetening for him.

He likes his eggs over easy just like you and prefers Glo-Worms to gummi bears and is, unfortunately, way cuter up close in this small space than you had initially thought. He’s got sweet brown eyes and a pretty mouth and hands that are far more gentle with Moose’s paper maps than you would have guessed by the size of his arms or the roughness of his chin. He curls up tight in the passenger seat for a catnap in the afternoon, and you can’t help but be charmed, last night’s exodus aside.

Eddie, you find, is also true to his word, explaining as best he can what happened at the hostel as he crunches his way through a bag of pork rinds and Sam Cooke croons over the radio.

It isn’t really a parasite, it’s a symbiotic organism. A “symbiote.”

“That seems a little, I don’t know, literal?”

Eddie laughs, “Yeah, well, that’s a good word for him.”

“A straightforward kinda guy?”

“Yeah, he’s-- I guess abrasive is a word for it. Aggressive.”

“Huh,” you say, adjusting your hands on the wheel. That seems like an understatement if it got you thrown out of a hostel, but what do you know? You don’t live with it.

“But it’s,” Eddie crunches, huffs. “He’s, I don’t know, protective. Won’t hurt certain people. Tries to do things he thinks I’d like.”

“Like throwing people into walls?”

“Not always that mean, but yeah.”

“What, then? Does he buy you bouquets?”

Eddie laughs, raspy, and sinks back into the cracked leather seat. “Once, actually.” He cuts his gaze to you with a smile, daring you to disagree.

And even though you think you should probably still be afraid of it, that kind of makes you like it-- him. Venom. That’s what Eddie calls him.

Without the interference of crust punks or college students looking for a cheap bed, things with Eddie could go on like this for weeks, you imagine, simmering. Sitting side by side, getting to know each other one fun-fact at a time, not touching except nearly, when passing things back and forth. Just little sparks, the kind of kindling that keeps you warm as you pull off to a rest stop around midnight to sleep.

It’s spring, but you’re in Michigan according to the rest stop signage, so Eddie gets out to grab the blankets from the trunk. Gravel crunches under his feet, not half as loud as the pork rinds. He knocks on the window in the universal sign to roll it down. This requires you to reach across the seats and crank, because this car is beautiful, but she’s in her golden years. You turn the handle and slowly, the window opens.

Eddie leans in, blanket in one arm, the other resting on the door. “You want to stay up here or get in the back?”

“Dunno.”

You shut the car off. The wind blows around him through the window, stirring your hair and smelling of grass and wet. Even under your flannel your skin prickles.

“Actually, let’s get in the back,” you say, thinking of your earlier nap. “Getting pretty sick of this view.” You gesture towards the wheel and windshield.

“Sure,” he says, lilting and with a shrug. He reaches his free arm in to start cranking the window shut himself. You let him try, going on until his arm gets stuck. It’s absent-minded and conscientious at the same time, silly but sweet. Perpetually endearing.

He pulls your door open instead of waiting for you to get out. When you slide into the backseat together, he folds the blanket down between you, a little modesty curtain between your back and his front. You can still feel him, though, warm and breathing behind you. It’s comforting to know that Eddie falls asleep almost instantly. It’s not the same for you.

You haven’t shared a room since college and before that you were an only child. You haven’t had a partner in your bed for… well, better not to think about it now. It’s not going to help you sleep any easier, thinking about how lonely the last few years have been and what nice company Eddie could be if you let him. Or rather, if he was even interested. That’s the part you doubt.

But doubt or no, you’re thinking about it again and, well, he’s gotta be asleep with the way he’s snoring, right? It wouldn’t be all that hard just to wedge a couple of fingers right where your thighs meet. Not inside or anything, just over your jeans. With the threat of waking him up it wouldn’t even take that much, probably only five minutes before you’d be coming in your pants all loose and relaxed. And that’d be better, wouldn’t it? To rub one out real quick, just for the sake of your rest. Nature’s Ambien. Maybe even the more considerate thing to do. Better than waking Eddie up tossing and turning from a nightmare or a frustrated dream.

You can make one up so easily, too, remembering the way Eddie reacted when he saw the car. A little sad that it was worn down, but unmistakably excited to get behind the wheel. Maybe he’s into that kind of thing, would like to bend you over the hood for a quickie…

Sleeping in jeans is usually nothing but a downer, but as you scooch out of Eddie’s big spoon, the seam of your Levi’s stretches _tight_ in just the right place and, hey, maybe you won’t have to get your hand involved after all. With the smallest moves you can manage, you ride the denim until your heartbeat starts to quicken. It slots in nicely with an image you have in your head of sitting astride Eddie’s thigh.

You nearly yelp as the seam twists in your underwear and pinches. It doesn’t hurt that bad, but the interruption isn’t welcome.

You do your best to adjust and slide your outside hand down your side and over the swell of your hip. It’s your non-dominant hand, but the other arm is currently pillowing your head and already mostly asleep and it’s not worth a crick in your neck.

But it is worth destroying the little trust you and Eddie have been building. Apparently.

You put your hand back where it was and try to ignore both the press of your jeans and the heat of your shame. Seriously? Trying to get off while he’s right there? You’re a creep for even thinking about it, let alone _trying_ it. From here on out, no more weird thoughts about Eddie and _definitely_ no masturbating in the back seat. You’ll keep things normal if it kills you.

Eddie shifts in his sleep behind you, throwing an elbow or knee into your back. And _shit_ , you think, that was a mistake, the worst mistake you’ve made in a long time. He’s gonna throw you out of the car, leave you to deal with all of this alone, abandoned on a shitty Interstate in Michigan with nothing but your clothes and the cornfields to keep you company.

You’re so busy catastrophizing, imagining yourself having to hitchhike your way all the way back to New York from western Ontario, that you almost miss the little rumble emanating from behind you.

**Done already, sweetheart?**

And _that_ \-- that is not Eddie.

It doesn’t sound like him. It’s not quite warm like him, either, but _hot_. You can feel the heat of it through the blanket, bleeding through to you like sunlight through a thin shirt. The shape of it feels off, too, like it can’t settle as it moves continuously behind your back.

**Mmm, don’t be coy, we know you’re awake.**

“Are-- are you, uh,” you stammer.

**Mm-hmm. Told you about us, right? We wouldn’t forget about that.**

You swallow, feeling like there’s an egg-sized glob of mucus in your throat. “Yeah,” you say. “He did. You’re Venom.”

**We are.**

And that kind of sticks out to you, the way he keeps saying it: _we_. Eddie said _he_ when he talked about it, but it’s evident Venom sees things a little bit differently.

**I know we just met but-- we’d love to give you a hand or three.**

“I, uh-- Huh?”

**That’s us asking to get you off.**

“Yeah. I mean, yeah? Uh, are you serious?”

**Deadly. Think of it as an apology. For last night. Is that a yes?**

“I can’t say I get asked this particular question a lot. Gimme a second?”

 **Take your time** , Venom says, making a noise between a laugh and a purr. He moves, and when he does it’s not quite like he’s rubbing himself up against you, more like he’s breathing with his whole body. **We’ll wait.**

One question sticks out in your mind, besides wondering if this whole thing is just an insane dream. Your mom always told you it was rude to talk about people in the third person when they were in the room, but this is a whole other thing. As much as it feels a little rude not to, it feels _too_ weird to say Eddie’s name, with him both here and not here at once.

“Are you sure Eddie’s okay with this?”

 **We don’t have a problem with it if you don’t.** Again that strange motion, a feeling like shifting sand or a bag full of snakes all moving against your back. Like his body is more complicated than a normal body. You don’t allow yourself to process how you feel about _that_ before you answer him.

“I-- uh, okay. If you don’t, then, I guess I don’t either.”

He _does_ owe you an apology.

You think you hear him say something along the lines of, _Glad to hear it, sweetheart,_ but you can’t be sure since by the time that reaches your ears _something_ is already sliding up and around your hip and prodding under the waistband of the pants you’d just been so determined to keep on.

These things are hot like skin that’s been sitting in the sun, but they’re not quite like skin, either. And they’re definitely not arms, that you know for sure.

Except-- something plucks deftly at the button of your jeans and slides the zipper down the front like it’s nothing at all. Then it’s cupping you through your underwear and that definitely feels like the familiar press of four or five fingers.

A second later, the appendage reaches further back to feel more of you. It’s moving like something wet, dripping and sticking a little to the fabric of your underwear and the skin of the insides of your thighs, but there’s no following feeling of _reach_ from behind you, Venom’s body -- _or is it Eddie’s?_ \-- is still exactly where it was.

You’re trying to wrap your head around that, the idea that it changes, when another of those sudden and mobile hands appears -- the first still very much inside your pants and very enthusiastically learning the terrain enclosed therein -- and yanks your jeans down off one hip. They jerk down the other hip too, the one trapped beneath you, with what can only be a third appendage.

You must gasp, because Venom is making that same deep growl-chuckle sound and saying, **Just thought we’d give a helping hand.**

The seam of your jeans hadn’t been bad, but this is something else entirely -- undulating and attentive but not too mindful of your undergarments, as likely to rub you outside of them as to “accidentally” slide them aside for skin-to-skin contact. That is, if it’s skin at all.

**Is that enough?**

You choke on your own spit, nodding your head as Venom plucks away all the while, rocking your hips back and forth as easily as the appendages rock against you.

Whatever makes him up spreads around the both of you, coming to cradle you and reinforce his motion. You would move back to show your enthusiasm, but you don’t really have the opportunity, with Venom enveloping and moving you like a doll with his whole body.

It’s overwhelming and so, _so_ warm, you realize as you squint up into the roof of the car and see the mist of your combined breath hanging like a cloud. Your breath and whatever it is that makes Venom move and grow and radiate heat like a tiger with a fever.

It’s like he can tell your focus is wavering, though, because then he’s tapping your cheek with a glossy black finger and tracing it around your mouth, forward but patient. You open up, let it inside, and it tastes like pop rocks and gasoline and that’s about all you remember before coming in your pants so hard your ears ring.

With the sudden quiet, it’s too easy to start drifting off right away. The feelings smear together -- the cold of the leather seat where it presses on the front of your right foot, the mind-numbing aftershocks of your orgasm steady as a heartbeat.

Venom keeps rocking you against him, the motion more soothing than overstimulating.

“Can I repay the favor?” You ask, through a dry mouth and rosy haze. You have no idea how you _would_ , but it seems rude not to offer.

**There’s plenty of time for that.**

“I mean I don’t have to, if-- I’m sorry, I guess I shouldn’t have--”

**I’m sure you will. But for now, rest. Did good for us on such short notice like that.**

You feel like you should say something about it being for your benefit anyways, but you’re out like a light, passing into sleep and back out into morning light in what feels like an instant without so much as a foreboding dream or four A.M. piss.

The windows are still foggy enough to make the car feel shaded and Eddie is still warm where his face is buried between your shoulder blades.

The whole thing could be the leftovers of a dream you just woke up from except for the cool air hitting the skin just above your underwear, and the way it makes you realize your jeans are definitely unzipped.

With none of the caution you had last night but twice the urgency, you reach down to put it back to rights. _There,_ you think, _like nothing happened_.

And maybe nothing did. Except that you don’t remember pulling your underwear or jeans back up after, now that you think about it.

Behind you, Eddie grunts and squirms. Warm and steady and definitively one shape now. “Chilly,” he mumbles.

Of course, you hadn’t even noticed. The blanket fell off the both of you, kicked off onto the floor of the backseat sometime in the night. As though you don’t know exactly when.

“Behind you,” you mumble back to Eddie, and reach an arm over to try to get it.

He shakes his head and scooches closer. “Don’t bother.”


	2. Burning Down the House

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things to note:
> 
> 1\. The music choices we mention are extremely deliberate, and two playlists have been created in the making of this fic; one classics/oldies/80s and one 90s-00s dance pop. I’m trying to figure out a way to post the playlists without linking y’all to my real name, but in the meantime please Google the artists mentioned and give them a listen to get that road trip vibe goin’.
> 
> 2\. Neither of the writers who worked on this chapter have watched any of the Dragon Ball franchise or have any opinions on it or knowledge of the show more than what is basically known by everybody in our age group; shout out to our one friend who has watched the show for the spicy take – we have no idea if this take is valid or not (this note will make sense at the end).
> 
> 3\. We started this fic on April 1st, right after the first trailer came out – so we based a HUGE chunk of this fic solely off of just that (we haven’t read the comics). We have now all seen and loved the movie, but please, please, continue to disregard any form of Venom and X-Men canon.
> 
> 4\. Sorry, not sorry. Gods of self-indulgence, we prostrate ourselves at thy altars.
> 
> **Quick heads-up:** the end of this chapter and the beginning of next chapter include under-negotiated kink. The scenes could possibly be read as dubious consent, but we have not written them with that intention and consider them to ultimately be consensual. We advise everyone re-acquaint themselves with the tags and, if you are concerned about encountering this content, skip the end of this chapter after the reader says "goodnight" and the opening scene of the following chapter.

> _ “ _ _ Watch out! You might get what you're after _
> 
> _ Boom, babies! Strange but not a stranger _
> 
> _ I'm an or-di-na-ry guy _
> 
> _ Burning down the house _ ”

                 --  “Burning Down the House,” Talking Heads

* * *

 

You manage to make it back on the road with minimal awkwardness due to mutual unspoken determination. The moment stretches between the two of you, tightening and expanding like silly-putty, soft and malleable in the morning sunlight, snapping back with the chill of the Michigan air. It’s tense, as if it could stretch too far and break apart.

“Well,” Eddie claps his hand together when the moment seems as if its reached furthest breaking point. He’s unrealistically cheery for the time of morning it must be, a mask for the awkwardness you know he must be feeling. “Let’s gas up and get going.”

“Sure,” you say, going along with the act, swinging your legs around sliding out of the back seat before getting in the front. “I’ll drive.” Your hands need something to do, your brain needs something to concentrate on and the unending vastness of Route 24 seems as good as any distraction right now. Your hands instinctively reach out to fiddle with the radio dial, already set to the oldies and classics station that Eddie likes, and you hope you stay within reception distance of this station’s towers. Ramblin’ Man by the Allman Brothers is on and it seems strangely fitting, if not a bit too upbeat for this slow morning. You wonder if Venom cares for this music or if it’s all Eddie.

Your next stop is St. Louis, which is about 8 hours away, but you plan to go via Indianapolis, a quick dip into Ohio from Toledo to a small town called Antwerp, and into Indiana. The ride passes in relative silence, the air stagnant between the two of you despite the breeze coming through the passenger side window.

“Turn this up,” Eddie says at one point, the first thing either of you have said since Eddie asked you to pull over so he could piss an hour or two back. The song playing now is one you don’t know but are enjoying the sound of, the smooth saxophone and crooning of the singer’s voice washing over you like a calm wave. “'S the Bar-Kays,” he elaborates, gesturing wildly at the radio. He seems to forget himself then, an easy smile on his face and no alien growing out of him. Just like the guy you’d met in Moose’s backyard, back in Maine.

“So…” you finally ask. It feels like the words are being dragged out of your throat like unwilling vomit, the kind when you’re hungover and you know it’ll make you feel better but you can’t stand the thought of actually puking. “So, uh. He in there right now?”

“We’re always here,” Eddie answers absentmindedly, fingers playing out on the windowsill, tapping out a rhythm you can’t make sense of; it doesn’t go with the song. He lifts a shoulder but doesn’t elaborate further.

“If I put on metal or something, will he come out?” you ask, trying to put a light twist on a situation that decidedly shouldn’t feel this somber. The radio station is starting to get staticky and you need to change it anyway. It’s not  _ weird, _ but you can’t stop thinking about the way Venom had made you feel, and Eddie is sitting here talking to you like he’s not a fucking 10 and no one will look at him in the bar.

“We don’t like metal,” he says, and you wonder what the qualifier is to make him talk about Venom and himself as one. You don’t ask a follow-up question, you just fiddle with the dial until the radio comes back in clearer.

You’re passing through Fort Wayne now, and ask Eddie if he’s hungry, but he declines. You shift your eyes over to look at him, and you can see the way his face scrunched up as he has an argument with his body’s other presence.

“He want some food?” you ask, tentatively, but Eddie declines again, this time a bit more forcefully. You can picture Eddie sternly saying  _ no, _ and wish you could hear it out loud. You’re curious as to the dynamic between the two of them. You shrug and look over, but Eddie is now intently studying a map, its edges already going soft from the amount of times you two have opened and closed it. By the end of this journey, it’ll nearly be torn at the seams. You shake your head fondly, you’re sure that the Google maps app on both your phones would be more accurate, but Eddie seems to take the “traveling in a ‘78 Trans Am” thing to heart.

You reluctantly tear your eyes away from him; the stubble forming on his chin, the way his thumb brushes at his jaw and his teeth nip at the bottom left part of his lip while he thinks.

_ Stop that, _ you think.  _ Don’t shit where you eat! _

Eyes back on the road, you take in the wide fields around you, the greenery and farmland on either side. Well, you’re in Indiana now.

“Hey, get off up here,” Eddie says, pointing ahead. “Exit 245.”

“Oh, you’re hungry  _ now?” _ You roll your eyes but dutifully put on your right blinker and start changing lanes. “I think you’re just uncomfortable with how fast I drive.”

**We want you safe.**

“We’re a little uncomfortable with it,” says Eddie, “but you know, I got this special airbag unit personally attached to me at all times, and he cares about you, you know?”

He deadpans, but internally your heart both swells with pride and contracts with hurt. Pride at both at getting Venom to speak, and the assertion that he – he cares about you. You note how he doesn’t say we, try to ignore it, gripping the wheel and asking Eddie where to go next.

You follow his directions, wondering where the fuck you could possibly be going, until out of the corner of your eye you see a little green and white sign stuck in the grass on the side of the road.

“World’s largest ball of paint?” you ask, raising an eyebrow. Eddie chuckles in that way that he does, the kind where he motions to cover his jaw but thinks better of it at the last moment.

“Might as well see some attractions on this road trip, right?”

Both eyebrows raise at that statement, but you shrug, assuming he must have some sort of good reason for wanting to take you here.

He doesn’t seem to, though, when he opens his phone and calls to see if they have “room to squeeze in him and his partner who are on their honeymoon road trip,” and leads you into the garage by the hand. You remain largely silent and flabbergasted the entire time, painting a layer of paint on the ball alongside him and posing for a picture afterward.

“Ahhh, that’s a good one,” he says, pointing at his phone’s screen, knocking into it with the pads of his fingers. “I’m printing that one out.”

“Yeah? Adding it to your spank bank?” You know it’s a low blow, but you can’t deny that you’re mildly annoyed at one of them jerking you off and then disappearing.  _ You _ haven’t done that since senior year of high school, also in a car.

“Tucking a picture of my sweetheart in my wallet, more like,” he says, one side of his mouth curving up in a half-smile.

“Oh yeah?”

You don’t even  _ know _ him, but you’re more than certain that he will be the death of you. Or one of them will be. When you get back to the car, which is pointedly parked on the side of a random bit of road away from prying eyes, he motions that he’ll drive and you saunter around to the passenger side door, wondering what the fuck that whole entire thing was about.

But it’s not Eddie’s coy smile and handsome face that greet you. In his place is a mammoth figure, oily and jet black, sitting in the driver’s seat like it’s the most natural thing in the world. 

**Hi there.**

You can’t help the startled noise that jumps from your mouth.

“You!” you say, accusatory, but he just smiles. All those rows of razor sharp teeth, rough tongue snaking out between them, a bit of spittle flying out are glistening in the setting sun. You’ve never seen all of him before, weren’t even aware that he had a full form like that, but he sure does. Humanoid in appearance, but a hulking mass hunched over in a way that makes you think his true form is actually much larger, and he’s made himself smaller for the sake of fitting in the car.

**Me.**

“Where’s Eddie?” you ask, thinking back to the way he had called you his partner, his  _ spouse _ for fucks sake; the way he had taken your hand and giggled smiled real nice to the kind family who’s garage you were in.

Venom doesn’t answer, just leans over the console to trail a finger up your cheek, lecherous grin on his face.

**What do you say we commemorate this landmark?**

Oh, he wants to play this game? Fine. Two can play at that.

“Commemorate how?”

**You come every time we pass something important?**

“A ball of paint is important?” You laugh, but you’d be lying if you said you weren’t feeling a nice swell of warmth in your groin, thinking back to the way Venom had gotten you off in the car just the night before, all heat and shifting black tar and moving  _ just _ right.

**Important enough,** he says, stupid grin still on his face as he moves toward you.  **Bend over?**

Your body feels like it’s on autopilot as you comply, reaching down to lean the seat back and pulling down your pants and underwear with them. Your shirt stays on, boots still on your feet signaling what you’re sure Venom already knows: quick and dirty.

You lean your arms over the seat and look over at him, a pout on your face. “Hm?”

**Not much room,** he muses.  **Tongue okay?**

“Uh-huh,” your breath hitches and you feel like the fast food shit you’ve just eaten is coming straight back up your esophagus. Now is  _ not _ the fucking time for acid reflux.

You’ve gotten your ass eaten before, depending on who’s doing it it can be a pretty damn pleasurable experience. As you feel the wind from the cracked window ghost over your bare ass, making you instinctually clench as you listen to the dulcet tones of Van Halen in the background, you feel that this particular rim job is going to hit that sweet spot between pleasure and desperation. You’ve been wondering about  _ that tongue _ since that night in Canada when you first saw it come out as that black shape swung at the douchebags.

**Delicious,** he muses, and for the smallest of moments, you’re actually worried that he might eat you, but you remember Eddie’s voice saying “he tries to do things he thinks I’d like,” and you’re pretty sure Eddie at least doesn’t hate you. You’re still not quite sure why the man had agreed to get in this car and drive with you for a week or two straight, but you had agreed to the same thing without any great reasoning so you try not to think too hard about it.

The first hint of  _ wet  _ hits your ass cheeks and you shiver without meaning to. Venom’s tongue slowly licks up, scratchy and rough in a way you hadn’t quite expected. You’d seen all the cilia-like papillae, so much longer and  _ different _ than a human’s, that line the pink organ. It’s long and tapered at the end, thick in a way that yours just  _ isn’t. _

**Yum.**

“Stop teasing,” you breathe out as Venom swirls the tip of his tongue around the outside of your hole. Thankfully, you had cleaned up at a gym the three of you had stopped at earlier that day.  _ Just because we’re road tripping doesn’t mean we have to forgo basic hygiene, Eddie, _ you had insisted. Venom had been strangely silent on the matter. Maybe he doesn’t care.

**Not teasing. Appreciating.**

“Cornball.”

**What’s a cornball?** He asks, tip of his tongue darting in and out of you now, making you shudder as he does so. You can feel the very beginning tendrils of an orgasm gathering, knowing that if he keeps up this movement faster and deeper you will surely tumble over the edge.

“It’s a – OH,” you start explaining, forcibly cut off as Venom’s tongue enters deeper, the thick shape of it filling you up and stretching you out just like a couple of fingers would. It’s not unpleasant but it certainly wasn’t expected, and you throw your hips back to take more of his tongue, wanting to feel those rough edges all over.

**Something nice?**

“Yeah, whatever, yeah, something – yeah,” you mumble, your hips working in a rhythm against his tongue now, the two meeting like a wave crashing and a wave retreating inward at the same time. The resulting crest is sputtering and powerful, an incomprehensible string of words leaving your mouth.

**You liked that,** Venom muses, a statement and not a question. You nod dumbly, your chin digging into the cracked leather of the headrest, sticky and uncomfortable, but your brain is solely focused on the sensation in your ass. One of Venom’s many razor sharp teeth pierces your ass cheek, gentle and grounding as all your focus zooms to that one spot.

“Oh!” You squeak, listening to him giggle, deep in his throat.

**Don’t be afraid,** his voice sounds like it’s right in your ear, despite knowing that his head is focused in your ass, all deep and caring and fucking _hot._ **We would never hurt you.**

“Yes,” you agree, blindly going along with what he says, wanting to feel more. You feel one of his appendages, fingers, or tendrils, or whatever shape he’s taken press into you, stretching you open a bit more so he can bury more of his tongue in you. “Yes, okay, right here, more.”

**We like it when you tell us what to do.**

“Make me finish, then.”

**That can be arranged,** Venom answers, and he dives back down to lick at your ass once more. The sun is setting slowly in the sky, the brightness of it as it dips behind the clouds getting into your eyes and setting the scene aglow. You squeeze your eyes shut, focus on the sensations, put your anxieties out of your mind, and let Venom take you there.

* * *

When you get back to the car after a quick restroom stop-off, your “driver” has been replaced or gone back to normal, however he thinks of it. Eddie looks calm, his hands loose around the wheel, with Cathy Dennis playing low on the radio.

“You want me to drive?” You ask him.

Eddie makes a little bit of a face, screwing up his mouth, and shakes his head. “S’alright. I can go for a little bit longer.” 

No complaints from your end. All things considered, you would rather have the opportunity to curl up for a bit, maybe take a little nap, sit sideways on the seat if you can. You consider yourself pretty resilient but that doesn’t help the lingering feelings of shakiness in your legs. Venom must not have been joking for once when he said experiencing human culture got him excited.  

“Didn’t know you were into 90’s dance pop.” 

“Hm,” Eddie says, considering. “What do you mean by that?” 

“Well, just, you know, assumed you were more of a grunge kid.”

“You don’t think I did the whole rave thing?”

“Just was imagining less braids and pacifiers, more bowl cut.”

Eddie throws a glance and cheesy smile at you as he pulls away from the gas station. “Who says I didn’t have a bowl cut?” 

You shift in your seat as the car pulls back onto the highway, a sudden familiar slick sensation catching your attention like a fish hook to the lip.  _ Oh, shit.  _

Back when you were bent in half over the center console, you hadn’t been thinking much about consequences. Now you have “consequences” slowly starting to leak into your underwear. 

“What about you, though?”

“Huh?” You say, Eddie’s question not at all registering.

“What kind of high school weirdo were you?” 

You shift uncomfortably in your seat for reasons completely unrelated to adolescent embarrassments. Or, well, partially unrelated. 

“That’s, uh, kind of a loaded question don’t you think?”

“Dish it but can’t take it?”

_ Aside from the fact that that is demonstrably untrue… _ “More like we might be here all day.” 

Eddie shrugs his shoulders. “We will be anyways, won’t we?”

“Let’s just say I didn’t have a lot of friends who I saw outside of extracurriculars.”

“Marching band, maybe?”

You don’t disagree.

“Hmm, and AV club?” 

“Please, it wasn’t the 80’s.”

“Okay, okay, GSA?”

“I’m afraid I had to make to do with Otaku club.”

Eddie shifts in his seat and this time it’s  _ him _ failing to protest that gives it away.

You start to laugh, just a little, low in your throat. Of course he was an anime nerd. As you laugh, the contracting of your stomach reminds you of how sore you are elsewhere. Eddie shoots you a conspiratorial look, and the mish-mash of feelings there -- Eddie’s good humor, the relaxed worn-out feeling of a drawn-out afterglow, the dirty-secret feeling of your wet underwear -- makes your eyes go glassy and your head go fuzzy for a second. 

Eddie’s eyes change as they meet yours. “Listen,” he says, “I feel like-- I don’t know.”

“What is it?”

“No, no. Nevermind. Don’t worry about it.” 

You were having a nice little moment just a minute ago, but without even saying anything about anything Eddie’s thrown it all up into the air. Also whatever the alien cum situation is, it doesn’t seem to be getting any calmer. Things are starting to tingle and warm in a way you’re not convinced is all you. 

You try not to sound agitated when you say, “I mean, okay. But I probably will. If you leave it at that.”

Eddie groans a little and you shift uncomfortably. “I just mean I don’t wanna make it a whole thing, but…”

“But?”

“But you know, if you have questions. You can ask ‘em.”

_ Questions? _ “Am I supposed to have questions?” 

“You don’t-- you don’t have to, but I figured you might since, well.”

“Well?” 

Eddie shrugs. 

**So cagey, Eddie.**

And that’s-- yep, okay-- that is Venom’s head, suspended in the air above Eddie’s shoulder. Shining black strands of symbiote flesh connect it to the skin of Eddie’s shoulder and neck and it bobs around in the space of the cabin. It swivels to face you.

**What we mean is that it’s been a while.**

“That is  _ not _ \--”

**We’re sensitive.**

“Unbelievable.” 

**And hungry.**

“Hungry?” You ask, mostly to Venom. “We just had lunch.”

**Need meat or else we waste away.**

“Meat? What do you mean, meat?”

“Fresh protein,” Eddie says, at the exact same time Venom goes on. 

**Dog, cat, human, rat. Anything alive.** Fresh saliva drips from his mouth onto the center console.

“ _ Human? _ ” 

**Very lean, but good, juicy organs.**

“Once! It was once!” Eddie interjects. 

**Only bad guys, though. Eddie insists.**

“You know,” Eddie says, “I’ve changed my mind. Question time is over. No more questions for right now.” 

**Bossy.** **Whatever happened to ‘we need to work on communication’?**

“Overrated.” 

“No, no, I want to hear him out,” you say. “How many people have you eaten?”

**We will need an idea of scale.**

“You don’t have an exact number?”

**Do you?**

“Um, zero.”

**That you know of.**

“Best guess?”

**What would you say, Eddie? More than ten, less than a hundred?**

Eddie says nothing but stares at the road and slowly turns up the volume of the radio.

**See,** Venom says like an exasperated partner,  **sensitive.**

“Oh,” Eddie says, pointedly ignoring the jab, “look at that. Cows.” 

**Fantastic idea** , Venom says, suddenly expanding and growing around Eddie to cover his arms and his right leg. The car swerves wildly and crosses over the yellow line separating the highway in two. You make a noise of surprise and grip madly at the dashboard and door as the car pitches over the edge of the blacktop onto grass. Venom wastes no time leaping from the car and ripping through the wire fence separating him from what you realize is about to be  _ his _ lunch. 

Eddie is nowhere to be seen inside the cocoon of Venom and it’s something of a comfort as he chases down a cow. The radio sputters. You’re barely holding onto the signal of the classics station and tune into a college station for a university you’ve never heard of but which is surely nearby. 

The indie rock isn’t a bad backdrop for your own frustration. Lines about the city tick up with the music only to come crashing back down in the chorus, fitting in nicely along the ebb and flow of heat in your stomach. One moment you’re thinking about the wide blue sky and how much you’d like to be spread out naked on the soft cut grass that rises in little hills across the road and the next you’re shaking your head and turning the volume up higher, higher. 

It is when you’re in the middle of this cycle that Eddie finally gets back to the car, looking like he’s just had a 30 minute nap in the grass and a fresh cup of coffee. The whole afternoon has left you with more questions than answers, but for now you feel its best to let them rest. Either it’ll come out in the wash or you won’t be with each other long enough for it matter. 

“Good lunch?”

“No complaints,” he says, and pulls gingerly back onto the road.

* * *

“You ever been here before?” Eddie asks as you pull into St. Louis from the I-55. You’d gotten onto Route 70 back in Indianapolis and that had been the true start to your trek out west. 70 all the way across. Feels a little bit like Kerouac, though after all this time, you don’t quite remember what routes they had taken.

The two of you hadn’t stopped in Indianapolis past a fuel-up and a quick bite to eat; Eddie had seemed touchy and a little like he’d had too much caffeine after the whole ball of paint and subsequent cow eating thing. You wonder if his skin ever feels too tight for him, sharing it with that alien. The difference between the two of them, where one starts and the other ends...it’s difficult to parse.

“No,” you say, taking a bite of a Slim Jim. You’d insisted on buying a bunch at the last 7-11 you’d stopped in; luckily, not-quite-meat not-quite-spicy sticks of joy are one of Eddie’s vices, too. “No, haven’t ever been off the east coast, believe it or not.”

“No shit.”

“No shit,” you agree. You’re not bluffing; you’re from New York and your furthest family lives up in Bar Harbor, there’s more of you down in Baltimore. Other than visiting them, you’d never really had the reason, or more honestly, the funds, for travelling. “Why, you been?”

“Yeah,” he says, taking a big ‘ol hunk out of his Slim Jim, like it’s offending him. “Yeah, my dad was a big Mark McGwire fan. Couldn’t let him go after he left the A’s. Wanted to see him play here.”

“Aren’t you from Brooklyn? Shouldn’t I be asking if you’re from a Mets or Yankees neighborhood?”

“I’m not originally from Brooklyn,” he says, eyes firmly on the road ahead of you, looking for somewhere to pull in.

“Oakland?”

“Not quite,” he says, but doesn’t give you any further information. Okay, fine. Despite your tendency to nervous talk, you don’t have to be forthcoming, either.

Although, you are nervous. Not afraid of Venom, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. Eddie hasn’t said anything since this thing with Venom started, and you can’t help but figure you’re just another pawn to him. So what is Venom playing at?

“Golden State, huh.”

“That’s basketball.”

“Whatever. We sleeping in the car?”

“Figured we’d get a motel, stay a day.”

“When’re we expected in Salt Lake again?”

“Not for a bit. ‘Sides, we didn’t stop in Indianapolis. And just for you, sweetheart, we are staying at the inn with the best value in America.”

He does in fact pull into America's Best Value Inn, a rinky-dink looking place with a light-up sign boasting $80 rooms per night. Priciest place you’ve stayed thus far, but after the cramped Trans Am nights, you figure you deserve it.

“Wow, you spoil me,” you tease, smiling. You follow him into the lobby and out to your room after he negotiates it, and you pleasantly note that he’d gotten a room with one king. “Can’t afford two beds?”

“They didn’t have any left,” he says, rolling his eyes. “It’s this or the Trans Am.”

“I get the side closest to the window,” you say drily, but truthfully, you’re not upset about this development at all.

A quick shower and you’re feeling mostly human again, and you quickly change into pajamas before crawling into bed. Wearing sweatpants feels heavenly after the days of unzipped jeans being your bedtime attire.

Despite the oppressive blanket of tiredness that’s settled over you, you lay awake for some time trying to gather your thoughts from the past few days. Venom’s made you come twice now, but he’s also Eddie, who can’t seem to hold a conversation for more than 10 minutes before retreating back into himself. Just who are you fucking, anyway?

His other part is still inherently a part of him, and he seems to have no problem getting intimate with you. You’re sure that in sharing a body, they mostly do things in-sync, or that one has to agree with the other in order for something to happen. Does that mean Eddie’s into you too, or that Venom is and Eddie is okay with it?

You run a hand through your hair in frustration before pointedly deciding to not think about it. You’re stuck on this road trip for the next week or two and although you could bail at any time and use public transport to get yourself back home, you don’t like bailing out of something before it’s completed. Besides, Moose is a good friend, and in these few days you’ve already grown to be quite fond of Eddie and Venom, even if they’ve managed to get you caught up in a very complicated love triangle in a very short span of time.

With a slight huff, you turn over and shut your eyes, pulling the comforter up over your shoulders.

A few minutes later you hear Eddie come out of the shower and ask  _ you awake? _ but you don’t answer.  **Let them be,** you hear a few moments later, and in your minds eye you picture Eddie tentatively reaching out to brush your shoulder. It’s the last thought you have before drifting off to sleep.

* * *

“Mornin’, sweetheart,” you hear as you come awake slowly, groggily.

“Ugh, morning,” you say, rolling over to see Eddie sitting on the bed, fully dressed and holding a cup of coffee. You won’t even fight with yourself to pretend that you’re not disappointed, imagining waking up to his crinkling eyes staring into yours, a small smile on his face as he runs a hand down your cheek.

_ Okay, what the fuck? _ You chide yourself.  _ You barely know this guy. Just because he looks like he’s a cross between a goody two-shoes mama’s boy and the kind of guy to have wild dirty alleyway sex doesn’t mean you get to be going all...domestic. _

“Coffee?” he asks.

“Yes, please,” you say, reaching a grabby hand out and inhaling the brown sludge. “Ugh, what is this?”

“America’s best value coffee,” he winks. “Drink up, I have plans.”

Eddie’s moods seem to switch like a faulty fluorescent light and you have to wonder how much of that is Venom’s goading. Yesterday, he got all weird in the car, today he has plans. Who  _ is _ Eddie Brock, really?

“You have plans?” you ask, leaning up on your elbows and letting the covers fall off your shoulders, trying to gauge his reaction, but he turns away to open the window and throw light into the room.

“We’re in St. Louis,” he says pointedly. “We should see the Arch.”

“You said you’ve been here before, haven’t you seen it?” You slowly drag yourself out of the bed, swinging your legs around and hurriedly pulling on some clothes while Eddie pointedly looks away.

“You haven’t,” he says by way of explanation. You half expect Venom to chime in, but the symbiote stays silent inside of Eddie.

“Fair point,” you say. “Okay, let’s go.”

“You want breakfast first?” he asks as you gather your wallet and sunglasses. He holds the door open for you and you look back at him with an arched brow.

“That incredible coffee wasn't already breakfast? Oh babe, you’re  _ too _ good to me. Really.”

“Ah, shut up,” he says, but he’s smiling. “We’re about a 15 minute walk from the Arch, I’m sure there’s something on the way.”

“Fantastic.”

Eddie’s right, there is a Starbucks a bit out of the way of the walk, but it’s a pretty nice day out and you’re itching for some coffee that’s not just crappy hotel sludge.

The Arch is cool in the way that Niagara Falls was cool all those years ago when your parents drove you to see it. It was a beautiful view but after about 10 minutes you feel like you’ve seen it all and you don’t need to really linger. You say as much to Eddie who chuckles and agrees, and you swear you hear a deeper, raspier chuckle as well, Venom laughing along but not coming out to play.

“Wanna do lunch?” he asks on the elevator ride down.

“Do we have the money for lunch?”

“Ah, I mean, no Ruth’s Chris or anything, but I’m sure we can find a sports bar around here that has $7 burgers or something.”

“Maybe a salad? I don’t know about you, but my shits have been hard as a rock.”

Eddie actually lets out a big gaping snort at that one, wiping his nose after where snot had dripped. “That’s fucking gross,” he laughs.

**Meat,** Venom says, by way of explanation.

You smile and roll your eyes at them, knowing Venom can see the look you give even if you can’t see him.

What is Eddie doing offering lunch? Is this a date? Or is this just another job, and you happen to be along for the ride?

* * *

“So, what did you study in undergrad?”

“Oh god, this sounds like a tinder date,” you say, turning your mouth down in disgust. “Fine arts,” you say eventually, raising your glass in a mocking ‘cheers.’

“Journalism,” he says, raising his to clink with yours, and you both take a swig of your beer.

“That worked out for you, though,” you point out.

“For a bit,” he shrugs. “Art didn’t work out for you?”

“It didn’t...not,” you say. “I just have too many interests to pick a focus and have a career in one thing, also loans, so I’m just working at the cafe and doing shit on the side.”

“Ugh, loans,” Eddie agrees, picking a fry off of your plate and taking a bite of it.

“Yeah, can’t Venom help us out there? Can’t he eat the people responsible for student loans?”

**Eddie...**

_ “Venom,” _ he groans, exasperated. “It’s not a bad idea, though,” he continues, pointing his fork at you.

“Mmf,” you agree around your burger. “So what’s next?”

“Kansas.”

“Enlightening.”

“Nah, I’m serious,” he laughs. “Nothing to do in Kansas, we’re gonna drive straight through till Denver.”

**Cows.**

“Or, we’ll stop when Venom says we’ll stop, I guess.”

You wrinkle your nose in distaste, but don’t comment. Although, the burger you’re eating starts to feel a bit dry in your mouth.

The conversation falls silent then, both of you likely thinking similar things over your burgers. You quickly take a gulp of beer to wash away the taste in your mouth and fix your stare back on Eddie.

“So…” he starts eventually, folding his hands under his chin. This is starting to feel more and more like a tinder date, except you’ve already fucked the guy’s alien other half. “Otaku club?”

“Eddie,” you say, fixing him with a glare. “No.”

“What, you don’t wanna talk about Dragon Ball Z?” he asks, giggling.

“God, I should’ve pegged you for a Dragon Ball boy. I  _ know _ you’ve got a piece of Goku and Vegeta hiding in those tattoos somewhere.”

“So what if I do?” he shoots back. You rolls your eyes.

“We are  _ not _ discussing this,” you say with an air of finality, but turn up the edges of your lips to show him that you’re only teasing.

“Fine, fine,” he says. “Favorite movie of all time?”

“Loading fucking question!”

“Okay, favorite X-Man?”

“Deadpool.”

“Is he an X-Man?”

“I think the jury is still out on that one.”

“And you?”

“I think the jury is still out on  _ that _ one,” he says, stuffing the rest of the burger into his mouth. For whatever reason, it feels like the conversation is over, and he seems to agree as he signals down your waitress to ask for the check.

“Back to the hotel already?” you ask.

Eddie shrugs like he always does. “We could get on the road tonight, make good time with less traffic.”

“Or, we could settle down for a bit and see St. Louis. We don’t have to be there till the 18th and  _ I’ve _ never been here before,” you protest, following him out of the restaurant.

“Haven’t we already done the one thing there is to do here?” Eddie asks, sweeping out his arm in a grand gesture as he holds the door open for you.  _ God, _ he has got to stop giving you mixed signals. This is moving at the speed of a maglev train and you can’t quite keep up. Maybe you  _ should _ go back to the hotel before this turns into one of those dates that never seem to end.  _ If _ this is a date.

“Yeah, I guess,” you say, bringing a hand up to your forehead as you squint into the mid-afternoon sun. As you say that though, you see several people pass by you clad in Cardinals gear. You slowly look at Eddie. “Or…”

He sighs, seems to be having a conversation in his head.

“Okay,” he says eventually. “Get on Stubhub, see if you can find something for like $20. Venom says he’ll be good.”

**Hot dogs, Eddie.**

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll get your hot dogs.” Eddie rolls his eyes. “So demanding.”

You note how like an old married couple they are and wonder how long it took them to get to this dynamic they have now, but you don’t know if you’re close enough to either of them to ask, despite having had Venom inside of you just the day before.

“Should we get hats?” You ask, smiling, nodding to one of the roadside merch stands set up outside of the stadium.

Eddie smiles, but shakes his head. “Not my team. Not wasting money.”

“Ugh, you’re right,” you sigh and follow him through the gates. “I  _ am _ getting us a stupid foam finger though. Or something.”

“Or something,” he laughs, heading up with you to your nosebleed seats.

It’s a nice night for baseball, and the game is enjoyable, despite neither of you caring about either team. Eddie wolfs down 5 hot dogs, you have a soft pretzel and cotton candy and are quite satisfied. The Cardinals do win, and you follow the wave of fans to a sports bar nearby where you both buy each other a shot and then a beer and then after another one of those you’re both definitely tipsy.

“I’m just  _ saying, _ Piccolo loved Goku, and the story supports that,” Eddie insists over the roar of the bar. You love the way his gestures get more expressive and he comes out of his shell as he leans into his alcohol blanket.

“Okay, if you say so.”

“I  _ do _ say so! Wait...have you not watched Dragon Ball?”

“I skipped that one,” you laugh and roll your eyes. 

**Eddie, what’s Dragon Ball?**

“Oh, my god,” you’re really laughing now, guffawing more like. You, and Eddie Brock, and his alien symbiote sitting in a bar in St. Louis discussing anime. If someone had asked you if this is what your life would look like, you would have laughed in their face.

**What’s funny?**

“Nothing, nothing,” you say, wiping your eyes. “Nothing, Ven, sorry.”

“Ven?” Eddie asks, raising an eyebrow at you. “Are we there?”

“Well, he’s been in me,” you say pointedly, decidedly  _ not _ something you’d say if you were sober.

Eddie spits out his drink, eyes widening, looking anywhere but in your face. “Bartender!”

“Hey, hey, hey, sorry. Too far. Was that too far?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, but he does order another beer and close the tab when the bartender comes over.

You guess you’ve killed the mood a bit, but Eddie seems to perk back up in a second, asking you how you like the local beer you’ve been drinking.

The conversation turns around to craft beers, something Eddie thinks are stupid and kitschy and you secretly have a fondness for. You make your argument and he concedes to trying some of your favorites when you’re back on the coast, and you’re not sure if that implies he means to continue a relationship with you when this trip is over. You try not to dwell.

As it is, you’re pleasantly drunk and the early spring air is crisp but not too cold and although things feel nice and settled, there’s still a strange feeling poking at you, needling you that you need to figure out what’s going on with Eddie and Venom before it’s too late. After all, that had practically been a date.

By the time you get back to the hotel it’s late enough that the parking lot is lit up under streetlights that give off a faint buzzing sound, bathing you and Eddie and the car and everything else in hazy yellow light. If this had been a date, now would be the perfect time for him step up real close and ask if you had a good time while staring at your lips. 

Instead he goes to unlock the motel door and says, “Ready to hit the hay, babe?” 

“I guess. Got a lot of driving to do tomorrow.” 

Eddie agrees, but that doesn’t stop the two of you from ordering a cheap pepperoni pizza and staying up til two watching old movies on TV. You do come across  _ Smokey and the Bandit _ , but only catch the last 15 minutes. After that is  _ Wayne’s World _ and then, inexplicably,  _ Rocky Horror Picture Show _ . 

It’s nice to laugh so unselfconsciously, even if it does result in Heineken coming out of your nose. 

You keep drifting in and out after Doctor Scott shows up and wake up in the middle of Frankenfurter’s final solo to find Eddie sawing logs against the pillows next to you. It takes minimal effort to kick the empty pizza box to the floor and reach over Eddie to click off the bedside lamp. Overall, an incredibly indulgent day, right down to the extra sleep in the biggest bed you’ve ever seen.

You glance down at Eddie’s face, appreciating the view as much as you can in the darkness of the room, and find it unusually peaceful. He makes a lot of faces when he’s awake, always responding to something in the immediate environment or inside his own head. But right now it’s just smooth and relaxed. You don’t even know if he’s dreaming.  _ Can _ he even dream? Can Venom? Does Venom sleep at all? 

You decide maybe not and whisper, “Goodnight.”

* * *

Eddie wakes up before you do, coming back to the room with shitty continental breakfast and shitty hotel coffee, which is smelling up the room in the most delightful way when you come out of the shower.

“Morning,” he says.

“Feeling well-rested?”

“Very,” he says, “but I did have some pretty weird dreams.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, something about our car breaking down, and the only place nearby was a big creepy house on a hill.”

“Hmm, I don’t know, maybe we should stay off the road. Sounds like a bad omen.” 

“You think? I mean, I don’t know if we can afford this place for another night but if you think it’s that serious…” His teasing tone makes your heart flutter but you do your best to ignore it as you stuff yesterday’s clothes back in your bag. 

“On second thought,” you say, “we’ve got a good luck charm. I think we’ll be okay.” 

You wait for Venom to say something -- purr at the praise or call you out for your flattery, but instead Eddie just sits there and sips his coffee.

“Think we can make it to Colorado today?” He asks.

Zipping up your duffel, you consider the question. “If I keep my foot on the gas and we don’t see any landmarks, then I think we should be good.” You turn to look over your shoulder and gauge Eddie’s reaction to that.

**Speaking of landmarks.** Eddie’s gone, now, and his disposable coffee cup looks tiny in Venom’s hand. That was fast. 

“Speak of the devil.” 

Venom laughs, draining the cup and throwing it across the room, where it bounces off the wall and onto the cheap carpeting. 

“You know, you did leave me hanging yesterday. Just went out for a cow and never took care of what you left me with.” 

**We didn’t forget. Wanna make it up to you.**

“That’s pretty generous. What did you have in mind?” 

**What did** **_you_ ** **have in mind?**

“Dunno, it’s pretty early. Hadn’t really thought about it.” 

His already-wide smile widens further in the way that reminds you of someone raising their eyebrows.  **A surprise?**

“I like surprises,” you say. As if it weren’t obvious by this point. 

**Good.** He stands up from the chair Eddie had been in and you can finally see how massive he is. Your guess is around ten feet tall, and you’re not convinced that he can’t get bigger. It looks like he’s exactly as tall as he could be without needing to hunch over in the room.  **Back to the bathroom?**

“I just got out, actually.”

**Hmm. Things might get...messy.**

You can’t help but wonder what that could mean, and if you were at all uncertain about this morning sex excursion, you’re letting your doubts go. You always liked Mystery Flavor. 

Venom has you undressed again and laid out on the tile floor in less than a minute, with that long tongue rolling over every inch of you. You are definitely going to need another shower after this. Venom rumbles above you and presses you down into the cool tile. 

**Fast or slow?**

“You said it’d be a surprise, surprise me.” 

**Harsh** , he says,  **we like that.**

“Oh?”

**Another time.**

“You keep saying that--” but you’re not able to put a question to him because suddenly that tongue is sliding down, over, and  _ in _ you, in a way that takes your breath away. You knew it felt good -- Venom had proven that plenty well yesterday -- but it still catches you by surprise with the way it twists and turns inside you. The texture is still there, but it’s slick, too, like he knew that might be better for you.

**And?**

Whether that required Venom to open up a second mouth or he can talk without the use of his tongue, you couldn’t care less. No point in wasting daylight. “Fast.” 

Venom surges and covers you, his body moving yours with its mass alone, pulling your hips up, your legs apart, leaving you exposed to every strange, slippery inch of him. He rocks against your hips forcefully and even though nothing is penetrating you, it still makes you squeak into symbiote flesh. You don’t know if Venom has hips per se, but then again, he’s structurally built off Eddie, right? You hold onto Venom as well as you can and try to erase that thought from your head. 

Something starts to prod at you, prehensile and conscientious. A warm up or the main event? You can’t tell with Venom, the way things move from one to the other like a rainstorm into a mudslide. It’s not the same as the tongue, smoother in texture, but equally flexible and alien. It stretches you by expanding in little pulses inside of you instead of by thrusting, like he wants to get you accommodated.

“Is that, uh-- What is that?”   


**Do you like it?**

The arm or cock or tongue, whatever it is, surges inside you, curling and uncurling before it withdraws. You clench your jaw and hiss out a yes. 

**That’s all we want** , Venom says from a drooling mouth nuzzled in your neck.  **Want you to like it. Like us.**

“I do,” you say, nearly breathless as Venom writhes around and inside you, “I do like it.” 

Venom makes a sound like purring, snuffles and licks and drags his teeth softly along wherever they can reach.  **Want more?**

“Chatty this morning.” 

The thing pulses and pushes and curls in you again.  **Just trying to be polite.**

He doesn’t take it too fast, but he keeps going, keeps pulling sounds out of you that are as much out of surprise as pleasure. To say you’ve never felt anything like it before is an understatement. He’s not so much playing with you as just  _ playing  _ you, finding chords and tones you don’t think you could make if someone asked you to. And that’s part of it, too. You don’t mind writhing around on a tile floor with Venom, making sounds to rival a pack of wild dogs. There’s something about his total earnestness and near insanity that puts all of your anxieties to bed. Even when you’re not sure about Eddie, you feel like you know where you and Venom stand. 

Or rather, at this moment, lie. 

He asks you again,  **Want more?**

This time he’s convinced you and you nod and groan a weak  _ yes. _

It’s like whatever he was doing before has gone into overdrive. That consistent pulsing feeling of stretch doesn’t stop and recede, but keeps going with each pulse, a sharp edge of pain that turns endorphin-hot and delicious with each fresh rush of blood. You try to look down to see it for yourself, but all there is to see is bubbling blackness, interrupted here and there with milky white veins rising to the surface. One more push and your eyes are rolling back into your head. 

You feel fuller than you have in years, stretched tight in a way that makes you viscerally aware of your limits. It feels like something -- anything -- must be about to  _ Pop! _ and give way. 

“Aaah, god what-- what is-- please, V, you gotta--”

He hushes you sweetly and licks your forehead in a way that could be described as tender, with some creativity. 

You think you have three more seconds before you black out when the popping sensation you’ve been waiting for goes. A sudden of rush as the fullness disappears all at once, and you squeal, fearful something has torn.

**Good, really good. That’s one.**

“One? You gonna do that again?” 

**As many times as it takes for you to come for us.**

The organ begins to swell in that pulsing rhythm again, telling you that you have a few seconds of coherence left. “Yeah, that shouldn’t be, um, a lot.” 

The second time you swear Venom doesn’t hold you at the peak as long, like he knows if he does you’ll come right away. And the third time is even a little less. You try to scold him incoherently, but he just laughs and wraps his tongue around your throat and fills you up again and again until you’re finally doing what he wants, coming so hard around him you really do see stars, as cheesy as that sounds. Venom pulls your back up off the tile, cradling you as your ears ring and rocking like he’s fucking gently into you even though both of you know he doesn’t have to move to do it. 

He purrs and purrs as you come down, shrinking back to a more human size except where he’s still buried inside you. He disentangles your limbs from his and pulls away gingerly, pulling out of you with a sticky-wet sound a slow rush of fluid that looks like translucent black latex where it stretches between your bodies. The sight of it makes your stomach flop around, your body trying to reignite itself on fumes. Afterglow and a kind of embarrassed awe tinge your cheeks and the skin of your chest. 

**So.**

You laugh, weakly, almost hoarse. “So?”

**Did you like it?**

“Yes. Which is kind of an understatement. You were right about ‘surprise.’”

Venom seems to reabsorb the goop coating him back into his body. The shiny smoke-colored liquid sinks back into his skin like water into parched earth. This raises some new questions which you expertly quash. You eye a fresh towel and the empty shower, grateful that hotels have nearly unlimited hot water.

**Plenty more where that came from,** Venom says as he closes the bathroom door. 

“What?” You call after him, spreading your arms and watching goo drip from your legs onto the floor. “No cuddles?” The TV clicks to life in the bedroom, and you laugh to yourself as you turn the shower on for the second time that day. You’ve made a lot of questionable choices in your life, but in this moment the only one that registers is regret that you waited this long to start fucking an alien.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Hope y'all enjoyed, sorry about the long wait. Life, work, etc. Y'all know how it is. The good news is, the next chapter is already written and just needs edits, so that should be going up shortly. The other good news is chapters 4 and 5 are both mostly done too, so hopefully updates come more frequently after this one.
> 
> We are overwhelmed and so thankful for the great response chapter 1 had and sincerely hope y'all enjoyed chapter 2 as well! Comments & kudos mean the world!


	3. Hold Tight!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **A/N:** Extra special early update! Consider it a Halloween present. We told y’all we had the goods. ;) Now get ready for the reason this whole fic was written…

 

> “ _Hold tight, make me feel_
> 
> _What you say is for real_
> 
> _And hold tight, Carousel_
> 
> _Girl you'll soon ring my bell_
> 
> _And hold tight, we will fly_
> 
> _swinging low, swinging high_
> 
> _We're gonna make the sky_
> 
> _You'll never fall, each time you call_
> 
> _Hold tight, hold tight, hold tight!_ ”

          -- “Hold Tight!” Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich

\--

Kansas is flat and dry out the car window, but still manages to be green at this time of year. The hills seem to roll past the road in waves, but there’s nothing much to do in the car but listen to the radio and wait for your turn to drive.

Eddie’s in a good mood and that’s always a nice sight to look at, the tides of his face going from neutral resting to vaguely pleased. A kind of sweet smile for a big boxer face. Must be thinking about St. Louis still— _you_ are. Despite the best efforts of time and distance, you haven’t gotten over it. Stopping in the city too long just to fool around would work against your plans, and there’s something in the way Eddie will stroke your knuckles when you doze or sigh into your hair that makes you think he could easily, _easily_ just stop for a week if it meant not leaving bed.

The sun’s in the high afternoon position, but you’re already looking forward to stretching out tonight, in a hotel or in the back of the car, anywhere.

You try squirming around in the seat to let yourself get as much lengthwise room as possible, ending up with your head resting on Eddie’s shoulder. The radio’s loud enough that you think he won’t hear your stomach making noise, although you aren’t hungry. Breakfast was the same kind of diner food you’re used to, and it hadn’t bothered you then. Or before.

The mileage signs pass by like infrequent flags, and you start watching for them almost anxiously. Weighing how uncool it would be to ask for a stop—and not a side-of-the-empty-road stop, but somewhere with a toilet. You aren’t about to shit your guts out into a ditch, there’s just some fundamentally too unsexy about that.

“What are you… thinking about?” Eddie asks, in that kind of deliberately too casual tone so you know he’s picked up on something weird.

“Nothing.” You’re trying to think about nothing. Definitely not about food or carsickness.

Eddie drums on the steering wheel to the radio while you get more uncomfortable. There’s an internal pressure forming that doesn’t feel like you ate bad food, although your stomach seems upset just by proximity. Maybe in commiseration.

It’s between towns when you can’t take any more. The movement of the car, your body temperature, how your attention cannot get off your insides, you’re sick. You’re going to _be_ sick. The sign of a no-brand gas station stands like a beautiful beacon coming up, not even on an off ramp, just have to pull off the highway. “Eddie?”

“Yeah, baby.” He’s gonna drive right past it.

“I think I need to pull over. I need you to pull over.”

“You feel okay?”

“No.” You don’t want to argue about it, so you play your ace in the hole. “I’ll puke in the car.”

“Ah, Christ, okay!” Tires squeal and grab at the road and you lurch as Eddie steers for the gas station’s driveway entirely too late, everything in the car rattling at once as he manages to buck off the road and into the parking lot. “Don’t worry, we’re right here.”

Under other circumstances you’d love the way he almost drifts the car back around behind the back of the gas station, following the arrow signs for the restrooms. Restrooms. You could use some rest.

“You need some help with the door?” Eddie’s fussing with getting his seatbelt off and the engine turned off and you can’t wait around, insides boiling. Your body feels thick and stiff when you almost kick out of the passenger side door, one arm braced across your stomach like you might need to hold your guts in. Sweat has popped out all over your body and goes cold on your scalp as the hot breeze slaps at you.

Almost hunched double by the time you get to the door handle, it doesn’t do anything when you try to twist it open. Oh, it’s one of those places. Where you have to grovel in front of the cashier for the bathroom key.

Eddie finishes shutting the car doors and hovers around you like he wants to rub your back. “Think it was breakfast? You went in on that bacon.”

You gesture vaguely at the locked bathroom door, with a pained look. “Eddie--? Could you--?”

“What? Oh, yeah, of course, here, let me—” He twists the handle and breaks it, but the lock breaks too, so that’s the important thing. This is a small price to pay for a little indoor privacy, and considering what else he could do to a gas station, this is the least of all evils.

There’s a single stall and a single sink and you slam yourself into the stall immediately, Eddie leaning against the door in the cool, dark space. It’s stuffy and it smells bad, and it’s so cramped that he has nowhere to escape from the way he can hear you struggling to breathe, retching a little.

“You ever see that movie?” He asks, weakly. “With the alien, and the guy’s eating spaghetti—”

“ _DON’T!_ ” You kick the stall door so hard it rattles the toilet paper dispenser. Your anger trails off into a whine and he hears your shoes squeaking on the tiled floor. There’s a lot of graffiti in here and it all blurs together in colorful squiggles. His vision swims momentarily as you wail, and by all rights Venom should be going berserk that you’re in distress, but the fact that he—they?—did this to you means he’s keeping quiet. There’s nothing for Eddie to make him do, either, nothing to break and nobody to devour in retribution besides himself.

“Eddie?” You sound pitiful, but something about the tone of it says both _pain_ and _sex_ to him, which should be really, really clearly separate from each other, but they aren’t.

“I’m gonna come in there, okay?” The weak metal or the cheap plastic of the door—whichever gives first, it doesn’t matter, but there’s a crunch and the door hangs off its hinges as he crowds his way in, picturing nothing but gore and symbiote teeth or worse, whatever worse is. But it’s just you, leaning against the wall with your forehead pressed against your arm like you’re hot, or you need to puke, something. Guts and other stuff twist inside him as he gets closer and sees your pants undone, fingers fighting sticky underwear and too-tight jeans. He’s been fucking you just like that all over the country, technically, maybe he’s gotten conditioned to seeing you like this and getting hard. It’s distracting.

“Don’t just _stand_ there—” You reach out for him and he goes easily, both rattled and comforted by the strength and heat of your hand. It should surprise him when you shove his hand down your pants and he slots into place behind you automatically, heart pounding so loud you have to be hearing it too. Is this just… a sex thing? Do you just really want him? He’s hung up on the whys that you have to grind against his palm yourself, which gets to him in a sudden, aching way. It’s not often that it’s just his hand, but _their_ hand, normally. Plurality.

It’s so distracting to think about that he almost misses the moment where you freeze up, sounds cutting out for a moment before his fingers get coated in a wave of warm, slimy something that doesn’t smell like you smell or feel like you feel, not exactly, but the strangeness of that is overshadowed immediately by the wet feeling of something round dropping right out of you and into his hand, and the both of you are frozen now.

“What was that,” you gasp, shiny and beautiful with sweat and a very real fear, not the fun kind. “What was that, what is it—”

Eddie shakes as he retrieves his hand and stares at the egg, sitting slimy and hot in his palm. It’s bigger than a chicken egg and smaller than a tennis ball and his brain is chanting _boba tea boba tea boba tea bite it bite it bite it_ because it looks like a tapioca pearl, dark and soft.

He squeezes experimentally and he thinks he does it gently, but it bursts almost immediately, flooding out hot, runny liquid that’s clear. It smells sweet, beyond anything a human body should produce, but there’s something else there. He thinks of all that Gatorade he bought you and stammers a dumb noise. The leftover skin is like soft rubber and dissolves gradually as he rubs it between his fingers. Like a jellyfish would, probably.

“It’s nothing,” he manages, heart pounding with adrenaline and a deep, deep relief. “Nothing’s in it, it’s just an egg.”

“Just--?” You choke a little, but breathing deeply takes priority, as he tries to get you settled, tries to tear himself away from the idea that part of him had expected some kind of symbiote inside. A little dollop of something from him and you all churned up together. **Maybe next time.**

Your body isn’t relaxed and you’re still squirming like there’s something you could do to be more comfortable. Eddie decides you need him to be more proactive, and he tries to be as gentle as he can as he runs his fingertips, then his palms flat against your stomach, lower. “ _Fuck_ , Eddie—” Even that gentle pressure is maybe too much, and you grab his hand again and put it back where you want it. “Just—there’s more. I gotta.”

“I’ll help,” he says, feverishly, desperate. There has to be _something_ he can do. “You just tell me what to do, sweetheart.”

“Use your hand? Be… gentle. Please.”

At that thought, he finds himself testing something internally—is someone going to choose an inopportune moment to make an appearance? He doesn’t get that feeling. There’s a kind of satisfaction, like he’s just having fun watching. That’s a little messed up, but it’s fine. It’s okay. It leaves Eddie to deal with the situation they made, and he can do that for you. He’d clean this stupid bathroom with his tongue if it helped you right now.

“Here, baby, you want your jeans off? You want me to take your jeans off?” It’s kind of an empty gesture at this point—they’re already soaked and sticky with egg residue or whatever, egg slick, and you make a two syllable noise that could either be _uh-uh_ or _uh-huh_ so he compromises and wrestles your jeans down, trying not to focus on how your legs are shaking, how he has to kneel to fumble with your shoe.

Your hand anchors itself in his hair with a clawing intensity and he chokes through a swallow. “Don’t—don’t you dare—take my shoes off in a fucking… gas station bathroom…”

“It’s okay, I won’t let you touch the floor. Lemme just—” Eddie finally rips your shoe off and drags that pant leg down after it, moving back up and hooking your knee over the corner of his elbow as he does, just meaning to keep your foot off the slippery floor but unintentionally spreading you open. You cry out with the sudden movement shift and arch against him and it shouldn’t make him want to fuck you, you’re going through something weird and it’s his fault, _their_ fault. But he’s thought it and now he can’t unthink it, the other’s certainly considering it—he could just push inside you and fuck through every egg you’ve got that needs to come out.

That’d be too much, too selfish. **Another time. We wanna see them come out**. Eddie makes a weak noise and lets you drag his hand back to yourself, back to where he can massage and rub and oh _god_ your body is slick and flexing. That kind of deep, raw muscle movement. He doesn’t want to crowd you but he has to, he has to push up close and pin you against the bathroom wall to keep the two of you propped upright, if your bare skin touches the bathroom floor you’ll kill him and he’ll help.

Two eggs pop out this time and the open-mouthed noise you make as your head bangs back into the bathroom stall makes his mouth water, his dick twitch. He only manages to catch one, the other slipping right between his fingers and slopping around on the floor. The one he’s got is just like the first, hot and soft but taut with internal pressure. He doesn’t have to squeeze it hard to make it pop, releasing more of that salt-sugar smell.

“Eddie?”

“I’m here,” he says, hiking your leg up a little higher and shoving his face into your temple where you’re sweaty and too hot. You might bite him if he tried to kiss you and he’d deserve it, but he doesn’t want to do anything that might mess up your breathing. His hand on your body shakes less if he keeps moving, starts a gentle, fast rhythm of rubbing you. He can’t tell if coming makes you push an egg out or if the egg coming out makes you come and he gets stuck in that thought loop, simplistic terms as he automatically catches another egg as you cry out. Size of a small lemon.

Your next whine is a different tone and Eddie’s a little heart-broken to find that you’re crying, although it’s all slurring together into sweating and noises of effort. “You—you’re doing real good, sweetheart, I promise—”

“This is—” You gulp for air even as you shove your hips against his hand to make him focus again, to speed up. “Embarrassing.”

“Oh, no, baby, it’s not, you’re okay—” This isn’t a good position for hugs, and he feels shaky with relief again that you’re not in terrible pain or actively hating him or—well, you could be, he doesn’t know. He hopes not. “I always thought, um, I’d have to be married for fifty years before I could take a shit with the bathroom door open, and here you are, layin’ eggs you didn’t sign up for like a champ.”

“At least they’re _your_ eggs,” you laugh, and he has to try so hard not to shift the two of you so he can grind his dick against your thigh or your hip or anything, because that was so nice of you to say, and he’s so hard, he hasn’t been this hard outside on his own, without being Venom, in how long?

“Yeah they are,” he grunts, sliding his fingers in long strokes and feeling you shake, waiting for the next soft press of an egg squeezing out. Now that he’s heard you laugh, even a little, this isn’t so bad. He can make this good for you. “Every one of’em.”

Your whole body jerks as another egg pops out. Eddie lets it hit the floor and twist to watch it roll softly towards a nearby drain. He’s struck by the image of letting them all pile up there. **Like caviar.** “Gimme another one.”

“ _Eddie_ —”

“Please? You’re doing so good for us,” he lapses into it on accident, doesn’t realize how aligned they’d gotten. “We could just—watch you do this all day. Spent all this time fillin’ you up, you can let it go. Give it on back to us, baby.”

You squirm in his arms and it’s unfair that Venom has to step in to keep the both of you balanced, but the extra strength makes it easier to keep you propped up, the both of you propped up. Eddie’s legs shake before the symbiote flushes through and around him, not enough to be obtrusive, but enough to make him a good scaffold for you.

He needs that. For you. It’s gone beyond just keeping you safe through this, he wants you to enjoy it. Eddie never wants to hear himself say it out loud, but he wants you to like your body acting out of your control, the surrender to something that feels good even if it doesn’t feel natural.

The whole bathroom feels like it’s shaking around the two of you, too languid to be the kind of porny jackhammering sex that ought to go on in a gas station bathroom, but the rest of the fantasy is there. Your panting and pleading, the rattle of the hinges on the frame, how he can’t think of anything but you, your scent and where your body meets his hand.

“Eddie,” You grit out, mouth pressed against his shoulder, breathing hot and erratic. “Inside.”

His dick leaps hopefully, but this isn’t about him. “We need a little more to go on, baby.” His own imagination suggests your thighs on his shoulders, Venom’s tongue curling and sliding eggs down his throat, thick with your taste, and he has to lock his knees. **Next time.**

“Your fingers, come _on_ —”

“Anything, sweetheart, we’re yours—” Eddie smushes his mouth against your ear, against the sweat at your temple, fantasies shelved for the reality of finally dipping his fingers into you, feeling the heat and the strength of your body even as it gives way for him. The next egg slips right past his fingers and into his palm as your back arches off the bathroom wall, hips grinding fruitlessly.

You beg him for something when he crushes it back up against your body with the heel of his palm in a slick flood, but you aren’t begging him to stop, so he doesn’t. Not when the final egg doesn’t even make it out of you before it bursts, and your careful pace turns frantic, chasing and urging his fingers deeper like you need to be filled back up. Eddie wrings out a little noise as he comes like an afterthought, unsatisfying and uncomfortable in his jeans, but it beats humping you as you go boneless in his arms.

Instead, the two of you go sort of boneless together, pressed uncomfortably along the flat plastic of the stall, breathing back and forth like two lopsided lungs in the same chest. Venom seems to squeeze in and around him like a flexing muscle, and Eddie’s tempted to just move into the passenger seat. Let the whole thing go on autopilot.

“Can I get my shoe, now, please,” you croak, and Eddie laughs breathlessly before he uncrimps himself from around you, boot squealing on the tiled floor. Almost fell onto the toilet. The king of romance, over here.

Your arms hang on him like fallen tree branches, and he wants more than anything to just curl up with you and sleep this off, whatever it was, whatever it leads to. But it’s still a gas station bathroom, and he doesn’t want you to spend any more time in it than you have to.

“You want your pants?” The only part of them that isn’t soaked through with crushed eggs and slick is what’s still on your calf, but Eddie doesn’t want to make any executive decisions for you.

“Did they touch the floor?”

“Yeah."

“No. Leave’em here.”

He kneels in the pond of weird sex oozes and keeps you upright as he peels your pants off all the way, trying to be gentle as he gets your shoe back on your foot. Like that one moment with the glass slipper in Cinderella.

The view of you from down there is also, coincidentally, perfect. You look good, even shaking and sweaty, clearly in need of vitamin water and a ten hour nap. And at least three showers. He’ll bathe you himself if you’ll let him, after all that. As his apology or his reward?

“I would… really like to get out of here, now, Eddie.” You reach for and dazedly pat his shoulder, head bobbing like you want to pass out.

“Gotcha. You’ll be okay in the back seat until we find a motel?”

“Sure.”

He picks you up and tries to ignore how much he’d like to change pants or at least clean up, but you’re the one of them that’s down a pair of pants and covered in drying symbiote egg ooze. So he doesn’t really want to complain.

“God, the janitor for this place is going to have a story.” The sunlight outside is blinding when he pushes back through the door, broken lock leaving it swinging on its hinges. “Mysterious slime found in gas station bathroom. Possible ex-senator? More at eleven.”

You make a little huffing noise that might have been a laugh, and he tries not to think about the ridiculous picture you two make, your bare ass in the Kansas sun before he can safely deposit you in the back seat. It feels stupid and clumsy to try and tuck you in with the blanket or bother you with putting his jacket behind your head, but he tries both anyway.

\--

The five or so hours it takes to get from the middle of Kansas to the Colorado state line pass in relative silence, neither of you really sure what to say.

With both the adrenaline and the afterglow fading, you feel like you’ve been fucked out and dragged through a fucking cheese grater and put back together again. Your body is full of ball bearings, weighing you down, every movement feels sluggish. You’re still in the backseat, curled around Eddie’s jacket and trying not to think about the way you ache, the way you’ve exerted yourself. It isn’t hot outside, rather it’s a nice, dry temperature somewhere in the mid-60s. Your east coast body isn’t used to it, and as if it’s full of wishful thinking, your forehead is sweating, matting your hair to your skin.

“You still doin’ okay back there, sweetheart?” Eddie asks softly, about once every hour. You grunt back noncommittally each time, unable to conjure the strength to say much more. You just want to get to the next stop. “We’re almost at the Colorado line,” he says, as if he’s reading your mind. “Soon as we cross it, we’ll stop and sleep. Phone signal’s shit, but the map says there’s a town called Burlington about 15 minutes after we get into Colorado. ‘Kay?”

He’s chewing on something that’s taking a lot of jaw strength, and it sounds and smells like beef jerky. You can still smell the liquid smeared on your thighs leftover from Venom’s eggs, and it’s making you faintly nauseous. It hadn’t been an unenjoyable experience, but now you’re left questioning what it all means, what this _thing_ is between you, and Eddie, and _Venom,_ god. Eddie can play dumb all he fucking likes, but both of them were there, assisting you in something that ultimately was sexual.

You make an affirmative noise back at him, and he turns the music up a little louder, covering the sound of his chewing. You lift your head up a bit to look out the window and see nothing, just another bunch of fucking green fields along I-70. You miss the coast. You miss the people, and the lack of vegetation, and sleeping in a bed, but somehow, you’re not actually yearning to be back there.

You _like_ it here, with Eddie. You like laying in the back of this car, trying to get comfortable on these old leather seats, trying to figure out the best way to snuggle up to Eddie to get the best use out of his body heat without crossing that invisible line you all had somehow erected. If it were physical, you think, it’d be not unlike water, some nearly-clear membrane, the kind that sits in front of a portal that you haven’t unlocked yet in a video game. As soon as you managed to get yourself through it, things would be clearer, they’d progress. But not yet. You only hope that little excursion hadn’t set things back.

Ha. Excursion. Eggscursion. You snort.

“What’s that?” Eddie asks, turning his neck back to try and catch your eyes. You don’t look up to meet them, although you can feel his hard gaze on you. He has a way of doing that, making his things intense even when they’re soft.

“Nothing. ‘S stupid.”

“Share the joke?”

“Eggscursion,” you say, not offering much by way of explanation, not that you seem to need to. He smiles – sort of, one side of his mouth quirks up for a second, and his eyes crinkle – before his face shifts back into the mask it usually is.

“Ha ha,” he deadpans.

“Eyes on the road,” you retort, laying your head against the side of the car and letting it hit the window repeatedly as the car speeds down the interstate. Feels kinda good.

“Welcome to Colorado,” he say as he turns back, and as you peep your head up, you can in fact see the sign.

Welcome, indeed. Feels good to be out of Kansas.

True to Eddie’s word, or map reading skills, you do pull into a small town about 15 minutes later. It’s a postage stamp in every sense of the word, “Burlington.” Another thing to make you miss the coast.

You pull off the highway and into the parking lot at a drugstore, waiting as Eddie goes in to grab you all some water and hopefully scout out a place to stay. Finally sitting up, you crawl over the console to take your place in the passenger seat, putting the jacket beneath your head and leaning against the window. You’re so, so tired, and going to pass out on Eddie in the parking lot if he takes much longer. Leaning across the console to roll down the window and get yourself some air, you spot him walking back toward you, a bottle of blue gatorade in hand. Electrolytes. It’s like him to be concerned. Or maybe Venom is. Whatever.

“Sure is a beauty you got there,” you hear a voice you don’t recognize say, and you lean up to listen. A local is talking to Eddie, complimenting him on the car. Ah, the Trans Am. People love to fuckin’ talk to you about it. Normally, you can muster up conversation and a proud smile, but right now you’d almost rather lay another clutch of eggs if it meant you could sleep. _Almost._

“Sure is,” you hear Eddie respond, feel the car reverberate as he slaps the side lovingly. Gently, as you know those hands can be.

“What’re you folks doin’ in Burlington?” the person asks, and you see them peer in at you. You quickly shut your eyes, as if they’ve been that way the whole time.

“Just passing through,” shrugs Eddie. “Know any places two weary travellers can bed down for the night?”

“Burlington Inn’ll run you about $50 a night,” the person says, you can imagine them scratching the patchy whiskers on their face as they do so, looking thoughtful. “Yeah, there’s some places like the Quality and all that, back by Love’s truck stop, but they’ll charge ya up. Burlington’ll do ya right, if you don’t mind it’s run by a couple’a mutants.”

You open your eyes again at that, cautiously, wanting to gauge the person’s face as they said that. They almost look like they’re waiting the same as you, eyebrows raised as they want for Eddie to respond. A mutant then.

“No problem with that,” says Eddie. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” they smile. “Gotta look out for each other, huh?”

You wonder how they can tell with Eddie, but as soon as you think the thought, you know. There’s an energy that emanates from him, an eerie otherworldliness and the knowledge that he is somehow _more_ than you.

He opens the car door and slides into his seat, looking over at you.

“Well, look who decided to join the land of the living,” he says, smirking as he starts the car back up.

“‘Two weary travellers?’” you ask, teasing quotation marks coming from your fingers as you do so. “‘Bed down?’ What is this, a fucking coming of age movie where you’re the kindly old mentor who’s _80 fucking years old?”_

“Ah, hate the player, not the game,” says Eddie, and you see his eyes crinkle again as he pulls out of the lot. “It makes the locals feel comfortable, like.”

“If you say so,” you say, pulling your legs up onto the seat with you to rest your head on your knees.

“I do say so. I got us a place to stay for $50, huh?”

“A splurge,” you note, thinking of all the truck stop parking lots you’d spent the past couple of nights in.

“Big guy said you might be needing it.”

You nod. “Tell him thanks.”

The words aren’t full of animosity, but they’re short, not the playful banter you’d had. Something is going on, something between the three of you, and you can’t keep dancing around it, no matter how much Eddie would like to.

“He says don’t sweat it.”

You snort, doubting that he actually phrased it like that, but you appreciate the sentiment. You sigh.

“We gotta talk about it, Eddie,” you say, shifting your head to look at him. He looks over at you for a second before flicking his eyes back to the road. It’s a while before he answers.

“I know,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “But it’s – it’s late. Can we just. Can we sleep, and then.” He doesn’t finish his sentence.

You nod, tiredly.

“Let’s sleep.”

The car rattles to the stop in the lot of a motel that looks like it may belong in the plot of an obscure- _From Dusk Till Dawn-_ tv-reboot-Tarantino special, but it’ll have to do you two okay. You feel better about the place being run by mutants with Eddie’s...with Eddie’s everything. No more hostel incidents. You doubt drunk college yuppies are the type of people to stay here, anyway.

You follow him out of the car, your small bag slung over your shoulder, sauntering behind him as the bell over the door sounds. The lobby is cramped, with a bulletin board with flyers tacked up on it for events long past, a _Mutant Support Group,_ sheet with 3 of the 5 pull-offs ripped off nestled neatly between _Flea Market July 13, 2015_ and _Learn Guitar! With Brian Smith._ You smile absently, and tune back into the conversation.

“Two doubles is fine. Two twins if it’s cheaper.”

Your heart stops. You’ve gotten so used to it, curling up next to Eddie at night, the strange hotter-than-human heat that comes off him in waves, the little noises he makes when he dreams, the awkward way he tries not to touch you and wants to get comfortable at the same time. The truth is, it’d probably be easier, when you sleep in the car, for both of you or one of you to sit in the front, but there’d be some unspoken word about sharing the back. It was safe, it was grounding, out here on the open road.

You don’t say anything though, and follow Eddie back outside to walk to your room, on the second floor. You flop on the bed practically the second the key fits in the slot, and shut your eyes, feeling gross but knowing you don’t have it in you to shower. You’ll take care of it tomorrow. Eddie makes noises while undressing, getting a glass of water, zipping his bag up. He flicks the light out, and you finally peel your own top and jeans off, slipping under the covers. They’re the cold kind of musty that’s a little gross, but they smell clean like industrial detergent, and you suppose you’ll take what you can get.

“We can’t afford separate beds,” you say, finally. He doesn’t answer for a long time, and you think he might be asleep. You know that you’re nearly there.

“We thought you might like that,” he finally says. There it is again. _We._

“Well, you both could’ve asked,” you say, and roll over. “Goodnight.”

With that, you close your eyes, and finally allow sleep to take you under.

\--

You wake up with the sun, the flimsy curtains over the window doing little to keep the light of the heartland out. Wearily, you roll over and look at your phone. _6:02 AM_ stares back in your face, with a little 4% charge symbol in the center.

Slowly, you and each part of your body begins to come awake, and you’re able to register just how much you _hadn’t_ gotten ready for bed last night. Your phone’s nearly dead, your hair is a mess, and your thighs are still...dirty. Quietly, you roll out of bed and tip-toe toward the shower, being careful not to wake Eddie’s snoring, face-down form.

The shower feels fucking _incredible,_ your first one in a few days. You can physically _feel_ the grime leaving your body, feel the dirt as it washes down the drain. You scrub at the inside of your thighs, finally allowing yourself to think about what had happened yesterday.

So. Venom had laid his...eggs...in you. And then you had...incubated them...and laid them? Certainly not anything you had done before, and you had done some _weird_ shit in your post-college years. But not that.

You don’t think you feel about it quite how you should -- such an insane, alien act. Mostly you remember Eddie, his gentle hands on you, helping you through it and wanting to only make you comfortable. You never get to experience Eddie along with Venom, and now that you think about it, it’s...nice. It’s nice.

_We’re yours,_ he had said. They had said. You work your hands through your hair, allowing the shitty motel shampoo to lather up as much as it can, massaging it as you try to work through that thought.

You’re not entirely sure that Eddie even knows what he meant by that. How much of that had been him, anyway? You’ve already worked out that you can’t separate the two of them, but while Venom has made his attraction and desire to take care of you apparent, Eddie certainly hasn’t been as forthcoming. So he had taken you out in St. Louis, he had essentially given you a handie through the fucking egg laying, but he apparently can’t share a bed with you outside of the confines of your Trans Am.

That car. The reason you’re even here, as an extra hand in some sort of edge-of-legal car trading scheme.

You stick your head under the hot stream, grabbing the conditioner and working a big dollop into the longer parts of your hair as soon as the shampoo is out.

You know it’s going to be awkward, but you can’t let Eddie continue this fucking charade. You’re almost to Utah, and now there’s been alien sex. He doesn’t get to take the easy, non-committal road out of this one.

You step out of the shower, mourning the loss of the warm water as you do, wrap a towel around yourself, and head back out to the room. Eddie lets out a particularly forceful snore as you throw open the shade, but you stalk over and shake his back. You just fucking _laid eggs_ and are awake, least he can do.

“Whats’it?” he asks sleepily, cracking an eye open.

“Let’s get on the road, handsome,” you say, turning around to rummage through your bag for some clothes. You imagine him taking the time to crack open his other eye then, blinking the morning sleepies out of his eyes as he runs his hand through his hair. “Shower’s free if you want it. Water pressure’s shit.”

“You’re in a towel.”

“Yeah, would you look at that?” You say, throwing a look back at him over your shoulder. You give a half-smile, and turn back around to grab a pair of shorts and tug them on, letting the towel fall to the floor. You dripped Symbiote come on a gas station floor for the man, he can contain himself.

“I sure will,” he says, and you can hear the smile in his voice. You hide a grin to yourself as you duck your chin, throw an old t-shirt on and comb out your hair.

He gets up eventually, moves toward the bathroom, and the water turns back on. You’re still grinning, but you sigh.

Gonna be a hell of an awkward conversation on the road.

\--

“We have to talk about it, Eddie,” you say as soon as you’re a comfortable hour or so in and en route to Denver once more. You only have about a two and a half hour drive to make today, and truthfully, you’re grateful Eddie had insisted on making that stop last night. These long stretches in the car start to get to you when everything looks the same.

Eddie makes a faint noise of assent but doesn’t actually respond. His hand hovers over the volume dial.

“You don’t get to shut me out just because Stevie Nicks is singing, Eddie.”

He’s silent.

“Eddie, please. There were eggs in me. That’s... kind of a big deal.”

Eddie looks stricken at the way you’ve just said it out loud like that, but the expression is only a flicker before he’s softly chuckling, trying to cover it.

_“Venom_ laid the eggs in you, babe.”

“Don’t get cocky with me. You _are_ Venom.”

**We are.**

“See?”

Eddie groans.

“Do we have to do this sober?” he asks, hand still poised on the volume dial.

Well...no, you suppose not. An idea starts forming in your head, you pull up your phone, type something in.

“No,” you say. “You think you can make it another hour? Then we’ll hit a town called Aurora, right outside of Denver.”

“Baby, you gonna get me _drunk?”_ he asks, teasing, shit-eating grin on his face.

“We’re in Colorado. I’m gonna get you _high.”_

\--

“I still don’t think we needed,” he checks the bag, “two pre-rolled joints and two packs of gummies.”

“Hey suit yourself, _I’m_ buying it while we’re in a state where it’s legal. We don’t have to use it all _now.”_

“We are _broke,_ babe.”

“And this cost me $34 and the lack of knowledge on how much it takes you to get high, if _he’s_ involved.” Eddie looks over at you, a questioning look on his face as you dig out the gummies to look at the packaging. “And these are _mimosa_ flavored.”

“Oh, well, if they’re _mimosa_ flavored.”

“Exactly.”

Neither of you is going to be driving while you’re high, and you plan to smoke the J anyway, way more guarantee that you’ll come down at a reasonable hour rather than edibles where they length of the high is dicey at best. You know these are store-regulated and shit, but you haven’t recovered from over-saturated brownies at a frat party your sophomore year. Shit sticks with you.

You make your way into Denver buzzing, excited to get stoned with Eddie and nervous for the conversation that lays ahead. You’ve both been doing an elaborate paso doble around it for a while, and you’d like the bullfight to be called now, please. You’re sick of playing the cape.

There’s a city park in the center of town, with the zoo and the Museum of Nature & Science nestled into it, and you doubt you’ll seem out of place at all, just two people getting high and enjoying the warm May day. Mutants and humans alike live in Denver, and to anyone looking you’d look like a young and fun couple. Maybe you wish you were.

Eddie conjures a blanket out of seemingly nowhere and the two of you take a seat on the grass. It’s comfortable, not too hot and not too cold, and sunny enough for you to squint into it, but not enough for you to be annoyed.

“Give me one of the joints,” you say, holding out your hand expectantly.

“What about these mimosa things you were so insistent on, huh?” He raises his eyebrows but passes you one of the joints all the same. You pull a lighter out of your jeans, hold the joint up to your mouth, and light the end.

The first inhale makes you splutter, and you want to be embarrassed, but then you remember he seems to think edibles work instantly. You cough into your elbow for a second, motion for water, bring the joint back up to your lips and take a puff.

“Hey, two puffs in a row?”

“First of all, Eddie, we’re not taking the gummies because we don’t have an hour or two to twiddle our thumbs and wait for them to kick in. Secondly, puff puff pass, motherfucker. Haven’t you ever smoked?”

He shrugs, eyes downcast.

“Oh, seriously!? You’re not gonna get high if it’s your first time!”

He laughs then, swiping the joint from your hand, taking his own expert inhale.

“You’re so gullible. Of course I’ve smoked before. I just don’t make a habit of it much anymore. The paper, and everything.”

“So what’s different now?”

“Alien living in me, pretty person next to me who wants to toke with me. You let your morals go a little.”

“Aww, you think I’m pretty?” You ask, letting the smoke out into a ring. You wouldn’t have ever called yourself a stoner, but you smoked enough back in school to learn a few tricks.

“Maybe,” he laughs, letting out a French inhale when it’s his turn. You roll your eyes.

“Oh you’re fancy, huh?”

“Been known to be called fancy sometimes, yeah.”

It goes like that for a while, you and Eddie passing the joint back and forth, falling into the routine of the friendly banter that you had settled into within the first few days of the trip. This time though, there’s a weird undertone to it, the half-melted ice cream once you bite through the chocolate covered shell.

Three-quarters of the way down, you ash the joint, put it out between your forefinger and thumb. You’ve got a good high going now, nice and easy. Your head feels a little like it’s suspended in thick liquid, like syrup, but it’s nice. It’s good.

“Alright Eddie,” you say, pointing an over-dramatic finger at him. “Alright. Talk to me about the eggs.”

He looks at you with puppy dog eyes, the ones that had first turned you on all the way back in Portland. Shithead.

“No, no,” you say. “No looking at me like that. Talk.”

He rolls his head around dramatically to look you in the eye.

“‘S there to talk about, babe?”

You snort. He can be so obtuse. You feel light and sleepy, but you’re not letting him get away with this.

“Eggs, Eddie. It’s like –” you start, trying to figure out how to put this. You put your hands out in front of you, gesturing vaguely. “It’s like, you don’t do that with your best friend, you know?”

You have to laugh at yourself then, because you’re not even sure Eddie constitutes as a friend, let alone a best friend.

“You don’t do it wif your mates,” Eddie says, putting on a British accent. You snort again. Idiot.

“Yeah. You don’t. You don’t do it with some random, you know?”

“I don’t know,” he says, laughing. “Ask him. His eggs.”

You glare daggers at him.

“Eddie,” you pout. _“Venom,”_ you say petulantly, but the big guy doesn’t show. Maybe he can’t get high. Maybe he wants to leave you two to your own devices. Asshole.

“What?”

“What, what? You put eggs in me, what am I supposed to think?”

“Well, what am _I_ supposed to think? I practically fucking milk-maided you in there.”

“Don’t,” you glare. “Don’t you dare.”

“You know what I mean, though,” he says. “Like.”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. Apparently the thought wasn’t that fleshed out. You sigh, shake your head a bit, but your brain doesn’t clear. Why did you think this was a good idea again? You’re pretty fucking stoned, and you’re trying to have a serious conversation. You wish you could go smack your past self in the head.

“I don’t know that I know,” you say, leaning back on the blanket and putting your hands under your head. The breeze kicks up then, and it feels nice. Real nice. You can smell spring in the air, the sent of the blooms coming through on the flowers beside you, and the unmistakable smell of good weed.

“I don’t get what there is to talk about,” he says, again. “I know it’s only been like a week, but I like you. He likes you. You like him.”

You’re not even sure you want to get into the implications of _that,_ but you plow forward, weed making you more confident, because you’re certainly not sure he would’ve said _that_ sober.

“So we’re doing this?” You ask, hesitant. “The three of us?”

He’s silent for a while, and when you roll your head to the left, you see that he’s settled down beside you, eyes closed and taking another drag on the joint.

“I don’t know how you feel,” he says, despite the fact that what he just said contradicts that. “Should’ve gotten me drunk instead, babe.”

And with that, the joint is a roach, he flicks it into the grass, rolls over, slings an arm over your stomach, and goes to sleep.

Your question stays unanswered as you lie there, about to follow Eddie out of the waking world, until you realize with a swooping feeling that it’s a moot point. You’ve got one more long day before you’re in Salt Lake City and this is all over. Would Eddie stick around in Portland for you after? You’d like to think so, but that’s the problem. You’d like to think so, but you don’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> : )))))))))))) thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed our special halloween update. now get out there and enjoy your halloweekend knowing that your lovely authors will be drunk, slutty versions of Naruto's iconic team 7 (ah, the joys of adulthood)


	4. Steamroller Blues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait! But we’re back with 9k. If you’re here for a kinky sex scene like there have been in the last few chapters, I’m sorry……….if you’re here hoping reader gets some clear answers on eddie’s thoughts, I’m also sorry……….but we hope you enjoy anyway! How ‘bout some PLOT, y’all

> _“Well, I'm a steamroller, baby_
> 
> _I'm bound to roll all over you_
> 
> _Yes, I'm a steamroller, baby_
> 
> _I'm bound to roll all over you_
> 
> _…_
> 
> _It seems now lately, baby_
> 
> _Got a bad case steamroller blues.”_

                         -- James Taylor, “Steamroller Blues”

 

Around your fifth scenic overlook, you stop taking pictures and start getting mopey. Eddie avoids looking too hard at you like he knows how you feel, and you do your best to avoid looking too hard back.

His nose twitches as he posts a forearm up on the hood of the car and stares out at the afternoon sun. It must be kind of unpleasant, the way he’s squinting into it without his sunglasses on.

“Need a break?”

Eddie thumbs his nose, still doesn’t turn towards you.

“Yeah, long drive.”

“Yeah,” you say.

“Don’t know if we’re going to make it to Salt Lake City tonight.”

Last time you checked the maps it was only about five hours away, but you’re not about to argue. Hitting the city means the end of whatever this is. And messy as it may be, the idea of returning to Maine tomorrow isn’t appealing.

You feel itchy, somehow, and it takes you most of the rest of the day to realize that it’s restlessness. Stuck in the car, but you feel like you should be running or fucking or chopping wood or something. Nothing left to do but count the miles on the markers. Four hours ‘til Salt Lake, then three, and then on and on until there’s another welcome center and Eddie stops to stretch his legs and empty his bladder, though from how many times you’ve stopped today you have a hard time imagining that he’s got much more left to give.

He rolls his shoulders and makes a face as he gets back in the car after.

“You doing okay? You want me to drive?”

Eddie shakes his head like he’s making up his mind, arguing a point back and forth inside his head. Maybe he is.

“He giving you any trouble? Tell him I’ll deal with him myself if he is.”

Eddie’s eyes flick to you and then he laughs, an internal joke.

“What?”

“Says, he’d like to see you try.”

Eddie is either the best or the worst wingman in history. Great at passing flirtation down when he needs to, but absolutely terrible at seeing what’s right in front of his face.

“Hey, listen,” Eddie says, hands working over the wheel and tipping his head as he turns to look at you. Animate and as restless as you feel.

“Yeah?”

“What do you think about camping out somewhere?”

“Like— You mean like, after?”

“Huh? No, I mean, well I was thinking tonight, before we get in.”

Embarrassment burns through you like a handful of Red Hots. “Oh, I didn’t mean to sound like—”

“No! No, it’s fine. I meant that, because we’re already out here and I didn’t think—”

Eddie trails off. God, so stupid, of course he didn’t want to spend any extra time out here. He’s probably got things to get back to at home, better things than sitting in a car with you and waiting around while Venom fucks your brains out in semi-public bathrooms. Even if he did kind of—But no, he never _asked_ to help.

You shake your head and smile at Eddie. “No, yeah, that sounds great, actually. One last stop.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, seeming to deflate a little, and your own anxieties quiet down in response. “How close are we to Zion?”

It takes you awhile to unfold the maps in fingers that are entirely too shaky for the insignificance of the task. Your breath comes out in disappointed huff when you find what you’re looking for.

“Oh, shit.”

“We can take a detour, if we have to.”

“It’s on the other side of the state. It’s closer to Vegas than Salt Lake.”

Eddie groans. “Knew I should have looked it up a few days ago.”

You struggle to swallow down your disappointment.

“It’s- It’s okay. We’re not that far from the city, we can just get in tonight. Get in and, uh, do whatever it is we need to. Make the handoff.”

Then lie awake in bed after, thinking about how you’ll have to buy tickets home the next morning.

Again, Eddie shakes his head and you can tell he’s irritated even if he’s trying to keep it under wraps. You know his tells by now.

“No. It’s, what? It’s already almost six. You see an RV park on there anywhere? Campground or anything?”

Your phone keeps going in and out, so you squint at the paper and Eddie reaches up to turn the cab light on for you. He smells kind of tired, like sweat and coffee and the leather of the car, and it’s ridiculous how badly you want to press the side of your face into his arm, just like that.

“Here,” you say, skimming a finger across the paper. A little combination glyph for picnicking-RV-campground, stashed just off the right side of the highway.

“How far from here?”

You measure your pinky finger against the scale and then against the map. “Sixty miles, maybe?”

“Sixty miles, we can do that. You think we can do that?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s practically early.”

“But not too early.”

“Not too early.”

“But maybe early enough to roast some hot dogs. Something like that.”

“S’mores?”

“You kidding me, babe? Of course.”

“Then we better get there and get some directions to the nearest grocery store before they close.”

Eddie brings the car back to life with a precise flick of his wrist and tosses her into gear. In perfect rhythm, you reach up and turn the radio back on, forgetting all about its silence.

When you pull up to the gravel site, Eddie asks you if you prefer to go for food or stay behind with the camping gear you picked up in Michigan. Having no preference, you flip him for it, and leave him with the secondhand tent and the campground mosquitos alone.

The park attendant gives you meandering instructions to a strip mall full of names totally alien to you – Macey’s, Kent’s, and the ominous-sounding Ream’s, all supposedly within a half-mile of each other so long as you’re willing to make the twenty-minute drive out there.

You turn on the radio and let the wind run through the car, cooling and fresh as the sun lowers over your left shoulder. The restlessness is gone, now, replaced by the satisfaction of doing something useful for you and Eddie.

You post up at the first store you see in the strip mall, the Macey’s. Unfamiliar grocery stores are like bad dreams, resembling places you know well but laid out all wrong. The flickering fluorescent light doesn’t help with the otherworldly feeling. A woman in fuzzy sleep pants walks by with a tow-headed boy kicking around in the belly of her cart. It rockets you back to your own childhood for a second, the way your mom dragged you around on errands for whole hot afternoons. Amazing how you can feel so nostalgic about something you hated so much at the time.

The woman grabs a creaky plastic box of fruit and walks straight through to the end of the produce section and around the corner, the boy grabbing at her and kicking at the cart the whole way. She murmurs something and he whines, but he doesn’t stop smiling.

It’s easy enough to find what you’re looking for – hot dogs and marshmallows and buns and relish and chocolate and graham crackers and cheap beer in the refrigerated section – but you take your time with it, wandering aimlessly rather than checking the aisle signs. Not that you’re not eager to get back, but you want to give Eddie time to set everything up and maybe get the fire going. With that thought, you head down to the home goods aisle and snag a bottle of lighter fluid. He won’t need it, but just in case.

At the end of the aisle, there’s a man blocking your way. Tall and muscular, in a horsehair coat and jeans, he has a messy pompadour hairdo and a rough, chinstrap beard that doesn’t quite conceal the dimple in his chin.

“Excuse me.”

The man ignores you so pointedly it’s an insult.

“Sorry, but can I, uh, squeeze by?”

You can practically hear Eddie’s laughter in your head as you say it. _You sure you’re from New York City?_ You are, but nobody ever got around to teaching you how to stop being polite. Roots run deep. _A minor miracle,_ you can imagine him saying with a slantways smile.

Halfway through the thought, the man at the end of the aisle turns his head. The lights glint off his eyes in a way that send shivers down your spine, almost seeming to flash gold. You’ve never seen someone that jaundiced up close before, but it definitely doesn’t seem normal, even for a medical condition.

He grunts and shuffles forward far enough for you to squeeze behind, his eyes sliding off you like oil. You fix your eyes to the Oscar Meyer logo in the center of your cart.

“Sorry, sorry,” you say.

The man says nothing back.

\--

Eddie is struggling over a weak fire when you get back to him and frankly, you’re impressed he did so well. He used all the napkins from his bag for tinder, but you would have done exactly the same. You don’t tell him about the lighter fluid, but tuck it in the trunk.

“Looking good,” you say, a sweating beer in one hand and your ass planted against the hood of the car.

“Thanks, worked real hard on my Boy Scouts ‘arson’ badge.”

“Boy Scout, huh?”

“Not for too long.”

“But you got your arson badge.”

Eddie pushes a log with a longer stick and chuckles. “I did, but the troop went broke first.”

“Oh,” you say.

“The church we met in got bought, then demolished by some developer.” Still crouching down, Eddie rests his elbows on his thighs. “They didn’t have anywhere else to put us, and all of our stuff – tents, soccer balls, board games, whatever – went with St. Louis the King.”

“That’s a shame. What did you guys do?”

Eddie shrugs. “Drugs, some of us. Tell you the truth, I don’t really know what happened to most of them.”

You hum to yourself, not wanting to probe any further. Eddie has been tight-lipped about his past before. You’re superstitious about pushing it too hard. It’s a lot easier to walk away from someone when you’ve told them more than you feel good about.

“Think it’s a Whole Foods now or something. Fucking Williamsburg.”

He gets up and walks over to you, taking the beer can right out of your hand and having a sip like it’s nothing at all for you to share it. After sharing a car and everything else, maybe it’s not.

“Weenies?”

His face is so open and soft as he says it that you don’t know what to do but laugh, nervously. Eddie is full of contradictions, even without Venom there to complicate things further. In some ways, Venom is the only uncomplicated thing _about_ Eddie. It makes you wonder how they feel about each other. Balanced or just off-kilter? Probably both, at least from your experience.

Eddie is close now, coming into your personal space enough that you can feel where his pant leg is brushing yours and smell the weak beer on his breath between you. You start to scoot away, trying not to brush up against him too much, as though he got this close by accident and it’s your job not to invade _his_ space now.

“Uh, yeah, yeah I got ‘em. Just in the front seat here.”

You grab the bag and offer it to Eddie.

“Hm,” he says.

“Hm?”

“Sticks?”

“Ooh, shit! I didn’t even think of it.”

You run a hand through your hair and Eddie rests a big, warm hand comfortably around your shoulder and gives an affectionate shake.

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart, we can do it the old fashioned way. Plenty of cleanish sticks around here.”

“Whatever you say, Eagle Scout.”

There’s a rumbling in Eddie’s chest. **Better not, you’ll make our head big.**

It’s enough to shock another laugh out of you. “Now you’ve got something to say?”

But he doesn’t, not to that, or to anything else for the rest of the evening. Through hot dogs and s’mores and a little over half of the twelve-pack, Venom stays quiet. It doesn’t occur to you until much later – while you and Eddie are in the middle of a conversation about his last foster dog – that maybe he’s trying to give you some privacy. The civility of that is as alarming as the reality is nice.

“Really I just felt bad because, a dog should have a yard, you know? And I know he was happier with me, but I’ll never be the kind of guy who leaves the city for a yard.”

You sip on your beer and consider him. What he’s saying, but also the way he’s saying it, back pressed up against the seat of the picnic table, butt on the hard ground.

“You look pretty comfortable for a city boy.”

He makes a face and shrugs. “Am now.”

And that makes you say, “Oh?” like it’ll actually prompt him to tell you a little more, but you don’t have that kind of power over him. You get the feeling that nobody does.

The fire dwindles rapidly after that, and your s’mores and libations disappear, too, until it’s pitch dark and there’s genuinely nothing left to do at the supremely late hour of 9:30pm. Warm air rustles through the aspens and carries the smell of sun-warmed rock underneath the smoke of your neighbors’ campfires. After so many days driving so late into the night, you feel like a kid being told to go to bed too early.

“You ready to knock yet?” Eddie says, half-sheepish and half-curious.

“Mmm, not really.”

“Hmm,” he says in response and you could swear he’s thinking about it – that day in the bathroom, the hot, thick liquid spilling out all over his hands and your clothes, the things he said at the time and has never acknowledged since – but he says nothing. He just gets up and goes over to the bear box where you’ve been keeping your trash and throws the last cans inside.

“Guess we can stay out here for a bit,” Eddie says.

“I think I might, but you don’t have to.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You’ve been driving a lot.”

“Not any more than you.”

That’s true, but the point is that you’re trying to politely give him an out and stubbornly, idiotically, he’s refusing to take it. It almost makes you wonder if maybe you’re not doing it for him as much as for yourself. Almost.

“Besides, I don’t really get, like, normal-tired. Anymore.”

“I’d—I’d never thought about that.”

“No reason you’d need to.”

“Yeah, but, I don’t know, I feel bad if you had to like, listen to my snoring all night.”

Eddie plops down next to you on the picnic bench this time, instead of on the ground, and lays an arm up on the table behind you. Not touching you, but almost.

“You don’t snore.”

“Wow,” you say, “that’s like the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

It’s meant to dissolve the tension a little, give him the room to laugh politely and finally just _shove off_ , but then Eddie opens his mouth, cuts his eyes to yours, and says, “Now I know that’s not true.”

_You—you’re doing real good, sweetheart..._

You grapple with it to the absolute best of your ability. The result is not a good rejoinder or even a sufficiently embarrassing _uhhhhh_ , but a soft, taffy-like silence stretching between you and Eddie where you’re both obviously engaged in staring at each other like you have no plans to stop.

_You’re doing so good for us… We could just—watch you do this all day._

Normally this is far past the point where Venom shows up and asks you which of the nearest surfaces you’d like to be bent over, so you expect that to happen or, if it doesn’t, for the heat and tension building up in you like an electromagnetic coil to fizzle out as he fails to appear.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Eddie says, finally. “Don’t think the big guy’s gonna show.”

“That’s okay,” you say while still watching Eddie’s eyes, so caught up you can’t self-censor.

Eddie tilts his head like a dog and gives a dumb little, “uh?”

You shrug, finally looking away and letting the moment dissipate. “We don’t need him, if we don’t want.”

What you mean is that you don’t have to fuck at every single roadstop to have a nice time, that you like sitting here with Eddie by the fire as much as you like taunting Venom into showing you his new favorite thing of the day.

But Eddie misunderstands perfectly, leaning across to brush his cheek against yours in what is probably the softest, most hesitant kiss of your entire adult life. So tender that it knocks the wind out of you in one second and has you questioning whether it happened at all in the next.

“You mean it?” Eddie asks.

Your tongue feels like electrified meat in your mouth, so you just nod over and over, eyes wide to signal your eagerness and earnestness.

“Can I, uh, Jesus. I don’t wanna be too forward here, but--”

“--the tent, yeah,” you say through a powerfully dry mouth.

“--can I kiss-- _Oh_.”

Instinctively, you hide your face. All that boldness vaporized as Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push, shit.”

You expect a harsh laugh from Eddie, the same kind he gives when you swear unexpectedly at some asshole passing on the right, or when you tell a particularly raunchy joke. Instead, he’s quiet as he touches the back of your hand with his fingertips, still sweet even after you accidentally propositioned him.

“Hey, I should thank you for doing it for me.”

“I mean, is-- would that be okay? Would you want to go back to the tent?”

“We were going to anyways, right?” His soft upper lip curls up at the corners in a way that makes you feel distinctly _teased_.

“Not fair.”

“Hm?”

“I asked first.”

“Guess you did.”

“So? I’m trying to be chivalrous, here.”

“So,” Eddie says, drawing the word out and dragging the ‘o’ over a mile of gravel in the process, “I do want to go back to the tent. With you. But can I kiss you first? Like, on purpose.”

There’s nothing you can do but nod.

“Okay,” Eddie says, his fingers pressing into the back of your hand where it’s laying limp in your lap. He begins to move in. “I’m gonna do it.”

“Mm-hmm,” you say, nearly going cross-eyed as his face gets closer and closer to yours.

He mumbles something right as his lips come up to yours, but it’s utterly lost. His lips are so incredibly _soft_ on yours, pressing slowly and gently so that the feeling spreads in a mirror of the warmth that’s spreading through your whole body. Your mouths slip against each other, lips lining up into lip creases, and then Eddie is pulling away with a quiet sound.

“That okay?”

“More than,” you say back, having a hard time looking him in the eye.

“You sure?”

You flip your hand over and reach for his. “Yeah, very. Can we go to the tent now?”

“Whatever you want, babe.”

You lead him there, barely sparing a thought for the dying fire and the recycling you could probably bring to the collection bin now to save time in the morning. It can go to coals for all you care.

When you go to duck into the tent, Eddie has you pause and sit with your butt inside and your feet outside. He unlaces your shoes for you, muttering something about keeping it clean. You almost have to laugh, but he does the same thing for himself and leaves your shoes outside, tossed to one side of the tent opening. Not that you can see, since it’s pretty much pitch black now.

“Hey,” Eddie says from somewhere to your right as he brushes a hand against your pants. “Where are you?”

“Wherever,” you say. “Right here.”

It takes some doing, but you get yourselves slotted back together so you can comfortably kiss in the dark with minimal effort. You start off on your sides, with Eddie’s arm wrapped around to press comfortingly into your back. He pulls and shifts, though, until he’s on his back and you’re draped over him like a blanket with your hands self-consciously opening and closing over sections of his shirt. You’re not used to worrying this much about the touching _you’re_ doing, and you’re not immune to the irony of being so nervous about this when Eddie’s already gotten you off three times. Or maybe five. They blurred together so much it hardly matters.

But, you remind yourself as Eddie rubs a big hand up and down your spine, this is different. This is on purpose.

You and Eddie both do your best to keep quiet, being that you are in the middle of a campground with no walls to speak of, but you know some of it leaks out into the night air anyways. It’s hardly the worst you’ve done since you met.

\--

The morning air is crisp and dry, but warmer than Eddie is used to after so many years in New York. You’re already gone by the time he wakes up, likely going to wash up in the bathroom and put on whatever lotion that is that makes your skin smell so good. He smells like it a little right now, too, and an unnamable feeling flips his stomach.

He’s seen eggs come out of you and he’s still got butterflies because his shirt smells like you. Stupid boy.

He half expects that thought to be in someone else’s voice, but it isn’t, just echoes around in a head that’s feeling empty this morning. Part of him is relieved for selfish reasons, but another part knows better. Silence is not something Eddie associates with Venom being either pleased or angry. Whatever mood he’s in is neither.

Eddie passes the time that you spend in the bathroom nudging at the charcoal left from the fire last night and contemplating breakfast on a grumbling and hungry stomach. He could relight things, but he’s not sure if hot dogs are really appropriate for the morning after. Or rather, that they’re maybe _too_ appropriate.

Then again, what’s the other option, eggs?

You interrupt the thought with gentle crunching footfalls coming down the path with a little baggie full of toiletries in your hand.

“Thinking about breakfast?” You ask.

Eddie has never claimed not to be obvious. He tosses his head from side to side, like he’s weighing options, but he’s already thinking that maybe you should just opt for drive thru coffee and, if you’re lucky, a banana or two. “Not sure if we should take the time.”

He looks up to your eyes to see what you think about that, but you’re still looking entirely too sweet and sleepy and he can’t help it, he looks away just as fast.

“Yeah, maybe not. We don’t have that much stuff left anyways.”

“Could always melt the marshmallows onto the hot dogs.”

You make a playful gagging noise and duck into the tent. Eddie hasn’t even bothered to roll up the sleeping bags yet and he’s embarrassed at his own absent-mindedness.

“Here, babe,” he says, going in behind you. “Don’t worry about this stuff, I’ll-- oh. Sorry.”

You’re shimmying into new underwear when Eddie pokes his head in. He closes his eyes and then reopens them, remembering that _oh, yeah, he’s seen you mostly naked plenty_ in real time.

“It’s okay,” you say, “I’ll just be a second. And I can get the bags.”

“I’ll go work on the maps for you.”

“Oh, sure, thank you. That’s sweet.”

“Pretty easy.”

Your face screws up in a smile while you pull your pants up. “Yeah?”

“Not in general, I mean you make it easy. To be sweet. To you.”

He mutters a soft _Jesus Christ_ to himself as he retreats, thoroughly humiliated.

The campsite is in your rearview within the hour, and you’re back on the road heading straight for Salt Lake City with one eye turned towards rest stops with fast food.

Eddie fiddles with the radio while you drive, every station seeming more obnoxious than the last until he gives up and shuts it off, unable to find any decent oldies.

A harsh beeping makes you jolt upright in your seat. Eddie’s phone, ringing for the first time in memory since you started this trip. It’s not that he keeps it on silent, it’s just that people haven’t really been calling lately, since he dumped his old phone and gave out the new number only to his friends. A reporter who got sick of evading reporters. Ha ha. And proof of how few friends he has left, even fewer who actually want to hear from him. He wonders if you would, once this was over.

But that doesn’t matter right now.

“Moose. What’s up?”

The voice on the other end of the phone is thin and strained, like the guy’s been running up a flight of stairs. “Hey, man.”

“Hey. We’re headed in now. Sorry we didn’t get in yesterday like we’d planned, just uh, just ran into some car trouble.”

“What?” asks Moose, like he’s not paying attention at all. “Don’t-- don’t worry about it. Listen. When you get into town I’m gonna need you to pick up a burner phone and make a call.”

Eddie mulls it over. To a certain extent he gets it, it’s a safer way to make a hand off. But what don’t the two of you know? He can’t help but look at you driving, looking relaxed and sweet. Eddie doesn’t care that much if _he’s_ put in danger, but he didn’t plan on you being put on the line.

**Please, you know how dangerous it is just to get in a car.**

He shakes his head like swatting a fly.

“Eddie, man? You hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah I hear you. Burner phone. Make a call.”

“Good. Good. Okay.”

“Where to though? Who am I calling?”

Moose gives him a string of numbers that Eddie isn’t prepared to memorize on the spot, but scrawls across his arm in ballpoint pen. After he reads it back, Moose seems satisfied and eager to hang up.

“Okay, I’ve got some shit to deal with. Good luck. Get there soon.”

“No problem. We’ll--”

Moose hangs up before Eddie finishes his sentence and if he didn’t know the kid better he’d be pissed about it. Lucky for him Eddie isn’t possessed by a monster obsessed with politeness.

**Monster? That’s not very nice of you to say.**

It’s not that he’s mad or anything, but Eddie’s really not in the mood for bantering right now. If Venom grumbles a little, Eddie doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.

\--

From the other side of the phone, you try to make out the conversation as best as you can. A long silence at the beginning, and then Eddie digging around furiously for a pen and writing something on his arm. A phone number that he reads back over the phone to Moose, the guy you met in Maine all those days ago.

The call ends with Eddie cut off in the middle of a sentence, and you want to ask but you don’t want to pry. What the hell though, you’re on this job too.

“Everything okay on their side?” You should at least know if you’re about to walk into something more crazy than the rest of this.

“Just Moose, said we should grab a burner phone once we’re in town.”

“Oh? That sounds kinda, I don’t know, serious.”

“Eh, wouldn’t be my first time using one.”

“For selling a car?”

“Stolen ones, yeah.”

That hits you like a mallet. You always knew Moose was weird, pretty disorganized for a guy who sells such nice cars, but the idea that it’s a stolen one -- that they all might have been -- is more than you’re prepared for. The sly confession tucked inside Eddie’s response almost misses you on first pass, like a frisbee overshooting your hand before it thumps you hard on the back of the head.

“Whatever he’s doing it for, though,” Eddie says, “I’d trust him on it. Moose is a ‘wrong thing for the right reasons’ kinda guy, you know?”

And Eddie’s right. The reason Moose isn’t here right now, doing this himself, is proof of that. He helps run a nonprofit in Portland, basically a mutant version of Big Brothers, Big Sisters, where he mentors kids who don’t have anyone else like them in their lives. He told you this offhand, while waiting for a latte at the library cafe, like it wasn’t desperately-needed proof that there’s still good in the world.

Hell, that’s probably the reason he’s even selling this car, stolen or not. Money’s gotta come from somewhere. For all you know, it’s inherited.

“Yeah, I do know.”

The closed-in space of tree-lined highways slowly opens as you get closer to the city, and you make Eddie switch with you so that you get a chance to gawk all you want on the way in.

You don’t see anything as you crawl along I-80 besides hamlets and trees. You pass a little town called Coalville that happens so fast, the only indication of its passing is green and white sign. An insistence that it exists out there, just off Exit 162. Whipping past, you think you see white buildings somewhere to the east.

Mountains rise up in front of you and then around you, a trick of the light and your speed giving the impression that they are growing around you like the ridged backs of great lumbering beasts. They stretch so long you lose sight of their shapes, forget briefly what flat land looks like. There’s just the road and brick-red rock and brown scrub undulating along it.

The city sneaks up on both of you, the hills disappearing back into the ground like they’d never been there at all, and an exit spitting you out into the most regimented and rectangular series of blocks you’ve ever seen.

“You keep an eye out, okay?”

“Yeah. Convenience stores and stuff, right?”

“Convenience stores, payphones, suspicious looking guys who might have black market goods on them.”

“Hey, I think I see one!”

“Haha,” Eddie says, over-enunciating the ‘ha’s so that they sound like a parody of themselves -- _haw-haw_. “Suspicious-looking guys other than me.”

There are people everywhere, but none of them are strange-looking, so normal that it turns the corner back into strangeness, which is when you remember it.

“Ohhhh.”

Eddie ‘hmm’s curiously in response.

“Mormons.”

“Would you believe,” he says, muscling the wheel to turn into a perfectly shaded parking spot in front of a perfectly square green park, “I totally forgot.”

There’s a little combination tobacco and pawn shop across the street that you didn’t see at all. You and Eddie walk inside with his hand gently tucked into the hollow of your back. His palm slips across your hip as he ducks down an aisle of cords and headphones, and you’re left replaying the feeling on a mental loop as he hunts down and brusquely pays for the cheapest pay-as-you-go phone.

The car is hot when you get back and the exposed skin on your arm squeaks against the leather of the driver’s seat as you slide back in. Eddie dials and holds the phone up to his ear. The seconds tick by, but you can’t even hear a ringtone on the other end.

He pulls it away, hangs up, and tries again. You burn yourself shifting in your seat. The seatbelt buckle touches you for less than a second, but it burns like a brand. Once again, Eddie looks at the phone, hits the red _hang up_ button, and begins to dial again.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, softly.

“What is it?”

Eddie laughs and rubs at a tired eye. “No service. Can you believe that, sweetheart? No fuckin’ service on the phone I just bought.”

He holds the phone out to you, and sure enough, a small X blinks in the top left corner of the screen. You’d been expecting the classic plastic brick, but instead it’s a shitty little touchscreen number. Even high school weed dealers and paranoid adulterers have the power of smartphone technology at their fingertips these days.

“No shit,” is all you can muster back. “A city’s still gotta have payphones, right?”

Eddie blinks and nods. You better hope so, because you don’t have another twenty-five bucks to blow.

“Maybe we can grab some coffee or something, too.”

It feels like cheating to google ‘payphone salt lake city,’ but there’s no point in making it any more difficult on yourselves than it already is. Pay phones are rare nowadays and a result is anything but a guarantee, which is how you and Eddie end up looping aimlessly through a parking garage at 2:30 ready to give up.

“Shit like this,” Eddie says, “always worth it in the end but _always_ a pain in the ass.”

You’re about to say something about that when another payment kiosk catches your eye, and an alcove next to it. “There, finally.”

Eddie checks and double-checks the number on his arm before feeding the phone his quarters. It seems to work, though, because he’s saying a gruff, “Hey,” into the receiver less than thirty seconds later.

It’s not loud enough that you can hear Moose on the other end, so all you get is Eddie’s half of the conversation, which seems sedate, as he usually is.

Someone answers and Eddie jerks his head. He looks at you, puzzled and mouths _Moose_ , pointing at the phone. You thought you’d be calling a contact. Before you can say anything, Eddie responds.

“Long story. No, we’re fine. It’s a parking deck. Payphone, yeah. What? Christ, sorry, well-- What? It’s not the first time I’ve fenced, okay, it won’t matter that much.”

You gather that Moose is probably on edge, which is perfectly understandable, but then something in Eddie’s face shifts in a way that makes _you_ uncomfortable.

“Moose,” he says, voice low. “You gotta calm down, man. Talk a little slower. What do you mean it’s not a fence? You’re gonna be okay, man, just-- I’m listening, okay.”

Eddie makes a noise in the back of his throat halfway between frustration and pity.

“If you’re this freaked out, it’s better that we know. We can take care of ourselves. They’re real capable and if things go south you know I’ve got an ace in the hole. What, not even a laugh? That serious.”

A pause as Moose argues something that makes Eddie roll his eyes. “Pretty sure I could understand if you would try.”

Eddie sighs, and you scratch absently at an ankle. You don’t know what phone calls like this are supposed to be like, but this seems unusual, even for that. Staring Eddie down, you wait for an opportunity to mouth _What’s going on?_ to him, but one never comes.

“You know I don’t care if we’re working with mutants, man, I got a lot in common with them. Coming-- You’re doing it again, man, slow down, you’re-- I thought you said we were selling to them. A tail? Are you serious? And you’re telling me you’re _sure_ there’s no bricks of coke inside the upholstery. Just, just fucking-- just tell me man, I don’t care. If it’s fucking, AK-47’s or whatever, I would rather just know, okay?”

At the word “mutants” your ears perk up. What does that have to do with a car?

“Whose safety? The buyer? I can’t do this if you’re covering for somebody else. Matter of principle, Moose, I thought you’d get that. Yeah, I know, it’s good work, man. Mm-hmm. A list?”

“Say that again. No, I heard you I’m just hoping I heard wrong. You’re serious. You’re fucking _serious_? I better be fucking misunderstanding you right now. The problem isn’t that you said it-- No! No, man! Kids? _Kids?!_ ”

Your heart leaps from your chest to your throat. Eddie listens for a half second then fires back, talking in a jumbled rush that you can’t make sense of without more context clues. They argue back and forth rapid-fire.

“ _I_ don’t understand? No, I get it, Moose, and that’s sick, that’s fucking sick is what that is. Actually, right now that sounds a lot like bullshit to me. Don’t play that-- Really? Fine. Go ahead, but I’m not giving you two shots, okay?”

He motions for you to come closer to him and after a brief moment of frozen panic, he taps the coin slot. Running out of time, then. You fish around your wallet and drop the coins on the metal shelf of the phone. He can put them in himself. It’s not that you don’t trust Eddie, but being close right now is uncomfortable.

“Of course I have, in charge of a bunch of superheroes or something, not like I’ve ever seen one.”

Eddie is quiet for a long time. He scuffs a shoe across the concrete ground and a car starts somewhere on another level of the deck. It smells like hose water and ice skating, although the air is still and warm. Moose says something that makes Eddie’s eyes pinch shut. Whatever last shot Eddie’s given him, it looks like Moose is making a pretty good argument for himself.

“Yeah, I can understand that.”

He sighs, half exhausted and half relieved.

“Yeah, man, I’ll-- I’ll talk to them about it. I’m not doing it if they don’t like it. Alright. Is that all?”

By the long pause that follows, it’s clearly not.

“The other guys? You mean like the guy who shot JFK? Curved the bullet, whatever. Spit it out. I know it’s bad news but whatever, we’re past that. How much further? Hmm, been a minute since I’ve been to California. No, no, like I said, I’ll talk to them. But-- Listen, I hate to ask this but we’re about to run dry. Yeah. No, that’d be-- Thanks. We’ll hit up a Western Union. Okay, man. Take care, okay.”

Eddie’s arm jerks like he wants to hang up, but Moose gets one last word in. By how Eddie responds, you can guess what it is and it puts you on edge.

_Be safe._

“Yeah,” Eddie says, leaning down to put the phone back on the hook, “we will be.”

\--

You’ve been living off of bottom barrel fast food for the last week -- gas station burgers wrapped in foil and left to sit beneath heat lamps -- so when you pick up the cash transfer from Moose it’s hard not to splurge a little. Which is how you end up slurping your way through a bowl of fresh udon in the window of a Japanese restaurant.

Eddie hasn’t said anything at all about the call, and you’re about to let out a, “So…” when he grunts and sits back in his chair with a strange kind of finality.

“Not sure how to say it, but, uh, well I guess first off, Moose wants us to go to LA.”

“LA?”

“Yeah,” he says, and sighs.

Moose hadn’t been entirely honest with you about the job. The “product” wasn’t the car so much as something _in_ the car. And it wasn’t really a product, Eddie says, ripping a napkin apart into tiny strips as he stumbles his way through it. Somewhere in the car -- under a flap in the trunk -- there was a list. It’s a list of mutant kids stuck in the system without any mutant support. _Oh_ , you say, and Eddie says, _yeah, like him_.

The job isn’t to sell the car, but to bring the list to somebody connected to a special school for mutants. Xavier’s, you’ve heard of it.

“Yeah,” Eddie says again.

“Hm.”

“He’s not making a dime. They’re only paying him as much as it costs to get us there.”

People pass by on the street outside, casting short noontime shadows on the grey sidewalk.

“I told him I had to tell you. And I’m not gonna make you come if you don’t want.”

“Do _you_ want to?”

Eddie shrugs. “He seems to think it could help the kids.” You can’t deny, he’s probably right. For a child to be given a place like that, where they’re ordinary among peers instead of a freak of nature? That’s powerful.

“I didn’t think you took mutant issues so seriously.”

Eddie averts his eyes. “Yeah, well, I don’t get that many chances to do good things. Done a lot of shitty things, though.”

You think of the cow, and how tensely Eddie drove after. It hadn’t occurred to you that there might be some things about being with Venom that were...difficult for him like that. You think also of last night, the sudden shift that’s come over the two of you since Venom took a vacation. Is it naive to keep on with this in the hopes that something more will come of it? No less naive than hoping you can get a list of kids the kind of support most social workers only ever dream of.

“I get it,” you say, “I’ll come.”

Eddie’s brows jerk up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, I already took the time off work, right? Might as well enjoy it.”

He fake-laughs at that, but his smile is real. It sends a flutter through your stomach. A small voice inside you whispers _maybe. Maybe_ _you both want the same thing, after all._

“There’s one more thing, though,” Eddie says, draining his water so that the straw makes those weird sucking sounds.

“Oh, am I getting a symbiote, too?”

“No, no, it’s kinda serious.” You wait in silence, truly not knowing what will follow. “Moose says he thinks we may have a tail.”

“What? Why?”

“The-- the other mutants. The ones always getting into it with the ones from the school.”

Your mouth goes dry, appetite suddenly disappearing. You’ve heard of them, too. “The Brotherhood,” you say, less for Eddie than for yourself.

“I think he’s just being paranoid, but -- I don’t know. Moose knows more about this shit than I do. You sure you’re still in?”

You’re not sure if being “out” would make a difference, if Moose is right. “Yeah, yeah I am. But we should probably get going.”

Eddie nods. “No use wasting daylight.”

You fill the tank up and hit the road, offering to Eddie that you’ll take first shift and he agrees with a relaxed shrug and reassuring pat on your shoulder.

Getting out of a city is always a pain in the ass, so maybe that’s why you’re not fully paying attention at the light. Too busy thinking about the freeway interchange coming up, or the Solomon Burke playing on the radio. But it must have been something, because when the light turns green you don’t notice the truck speeding out into the intersection until you’re about to be T-boned straight to hell.

You don’t move or even scream. All there’s time to do is grip the steering wheel harder and harder and try to slam your foot down on the break.

But before you can, black explodes around the cabin of the car, little tar-like tentacles attaching themselves to you and points around the doors and windshield -- Venom making you both makeshift harnesses. An out-of-place foot slams down next to yours where it’s already pressing the brake to the floorboards. _Really? Like this?_ Before you can wrap your head around even the subtle disappointment propelling that thought -- so different from the terror you would have expected -- it’s clear that, no, not like this. The car is actually coming to a stop, and the truck is out of your path, also stopping, just beyond where you would have collided. By the time you take a breath, Venom is gone, receded back into Eddie who is already climbing out the car and yelling.

“What in the _fuck_ , man?” He sounds fucking _angry_.

“Eddie!” You holler at him, already ballooning with an entirely different kind of fear.

The door of the truck opens and a man drops out, as languid about it as a cat coming down off a shelf, and you do a double-take from the driver’s seat. He wears dirty jeans and and chews on a burnt-down cigar like he didn’t just nearly get in a car crash. His hair is unkempt and stiff, and his sideburns sweep around his jaw into a chinstrap beard. When was the last time you saw a person with one of those?

He raises a hand in a parody of apology, voice infuriatingly level. “Sorry. I don’t know what the hell happened.”

“What happened? You ran a red fucking light! Did you fall asleep?!” Eddie’s yelling, now, and you get it, you would want to too, but the hairs on the back of your neck stand straight up.

“Lay off. Nobody died.”

The man looks at the Trans Am and pins you down with his eyes that flicker yellow in the sun. Oh yeah, you have seen that ugly beard recently. It’s the man from the grocery store, the one who nearly blocked a whole aisle.

The passenger door of the truck opens and a blond-haired kid hops down. Within a few steps, it’s clear he’s coming towards you, but Eddie doesn’t notice. Panic rises in you like bile.

“Nobody-- Are you kidding me? Are you fucking _kidding_ \--”

“EDDIE!” You practically scream it out the window, and all three of the men stop what they’re doing at once. Embarrassment floods over you hot and red -- _overreacting, stupid, hysterical, what are you_ doing -- causing tears to sting at your eyes. Your voice comes out thick and high instead of certain and commanding. “Get-- Get back in the car. It’s fine. We’re fine.”

His eyes soften like ice cream in August heat. “You sure, babe?” All his attention is on you, protective instinct morphing back to comforting again. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m okay. Get back in the car. Let’s go.” You breathe in deep, try to make your body obey. A bead of sweat drips down the side of your face, but your voice comes out even. “We have somewhere to be.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, already coming back towards the car on legs you can see are unsteady. “We do.”

You reach across to push his door open wider and he says something to the man with the sideburns and cigar -- something about “lucky” -- and you turn the car off and on again mechanically.

Eddie asks you something, but all you can feel is the wheel under your hands. You drive for twenty minutes before you realize you don’t know where you’re going and finally pull over near a train station.

He’s too calm and too kind when you start to cry, and his arms are more comforting than you can afford right now. You do your absolute best not to think too hard about how this may be the last time you feel them.

\--

The four-hour ride out of Salt Lake was tense and quiet, with Eddie tapping anxiously against the wheel out of rhythm with the music. But finally, you make it to another cheap motel in a town called St. George. It’s an indulgence, but Eddie won’t listen to your protest, just counts out the cash and drags your bags into the room. Eddie lays down on the bed, but after everything you need a fucking moment.

You get up, pace the walkway outside the motel, try and sit on the curb under the flickering streetlight, and hope no suspicious cars pull into the lot as you do. It’s _hot_ for May; dry, red, and 90 degrees. You’re fairly sure that in these desert climates the temperature is supposed to drop at night, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.

You peel off your ratty sweatshirt, sitting in your t-shirt and pajama shorts, and focus on the droplets of sweat pooling in the small of your back. What is Eddie playing at with this hot-and-cold thing? What are _you_ playing at?

When you finally drag yourself up from the curb, you don’t go back to the room right away, hesitant to return. A lap around the motel leads you to a room with an ice machine, and chewing on ice cubes has always been a way you work through your anxiety, so you busy yourself there, trying not to think too hard about anything. Eventually, your eyes catch the clock on the wall outside of the office and you make your way back to the room.

**Seem tense, Eddie.**

You hear Venom’s distinct grumble as you near the room on your way back from the ice machine. Your hand clenches around the little paper cup of ice, starting to get damp from condensation. The coldness wrenches you back to reality.

**Seem really tense. Need to relax, Eddie.**

Venom’s still talking, and you can picture it; Eddie on the bed, eyes wide and breathing hard, panicking over what the two of you were going to do when your tail inevitably catches up to you. You were two people and an alien, they were a whole group of people who had trained their mutations, and you were in a 1978 Trans Am. Logically, they would catch you eventually.

Venom would be sticking out of his shoulder, a tendril gently pushing him down, telling him to relax. The two of them, they were like brothers in a weird way, bonded in more ways than just physical, and you had caught the two of them in conversation while they didn’t think you were listening more than once. Sometimes while they thought you were asleep, or sometimes when they thought you were too preoccupied watching the landscape roll by outside the window, they bantered and bickered and inquired after each other like any well...couple.

Maybe brothers was the wrong word. Maybe you didn’t want to admit that the tension between you and Venom, between you and Eddie, you saw reflected back between the two of them. And look what you had done – fucked them both.

“Not tense,” Eddie asserts, voice gruff. “Stressed. Just stressed.”

**Same thing, isn’t it? Relax.**

It’s not a particularly deep conversation but it doesn’t feel like something you should be listening to anyway; it feels too tender, too intimate. You’re pretty sure the smarter idea would be to head back outside and give them some alone time, but a part of you wants to stop whatever’s happening before it goes further. If you’re going to be with Venom and Eddie, you have a right to be privy to these conversations, too.

You slide the key into the lock, inching the door open a bit so you don’t startle them, but when you peek into the room, it’s clear that Venom and Eddie are far too distracted to even hear you at all.

“I know, love,” Eddie’s saying. “But you can’t protect me from everything.”

_Love?_

**Yes we can,** Venom says stubbornly, from his place _on top_ of Eddie – a very much naked Eddie who looks nearly like a separate entity from Venom with the way Venom is in a humanoid form, straddling Eddie, whose legs are on Venom’s shoulders.

 **Yes we can,** he continues, and he’s moving slowly, in and out of Eddie in a way that is so much _more_ than fucking. **We’ll always protect you, because we’re a perfect match.**

“Ven,” says Eddie softly, eyes cast downward, a hand coming up to brush Venom’s cheek in an almost subservient motion that you certainly hadn’t seen when the two of you had had sex.

**And...we miss you. Had us so worried earlier, with the truck.**

“That wasn’t my fault,” says Eddie stubbornly. And then, softer: “‘M sorry for worrying you, though.”

 **Not allowed to die, Eddie.** Venom says, quieter than you’ve ever heard him before, a tar-like hand on the inside of Eddie’s thigh, pushing into him deeper.

“I know, I kn – _oh,”_ Eddie’s eyes roll back. “Love it when you do that.”

**Makes us feel good.**

“Very good, dear,” smiles Eddie, and god, this is none of the dirty, raunchy fucking that had happened between you and Venom, not even the one-shade-lighter-than-kinky sex you had had with Eddie, this is _making love._ It’s making love, and it’s domestic, and intimate, and _very fucking clearly_ not their first rodeo.

Your breathing speeds up without you even realizing that it had, your heart feels like it’s in your throat and you can count every beat with the force it’s exerting. You don’t want to watch this. You _shouldn’t_ be watching this. This was clearly a relationship, and you were something fun on the side.

You quickly jerk the door shut, fumbling to get the key out of the lock and into your pocket before striding across the parking lot in fast, meaningful steps to get to the car as soon as possible.

The door had closed with a loud _click,_ and if two heads had swiveled around to see who was in the doorway, you weren't there to see them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for reading, hope you enjoyed this chapter. We'd love to hear your thoughts and what you think is coming up next!
> 
> **EDIT 1/22/19: This fic, as you may have figured out, is currently on hiatus! The entire thing had been planned out, so if you have burning questions about what was/is going to happen, please feel free to message witchoil at witchoil.tumblr.com!**


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